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Sakura was running late.
It wasn’t exactly her fault, or at least, she was able to convince herself it wasn’t her fault.
It wasn’t her fault that she had to work eighteen hour shifts because the hospital was understaffed. It wasn’t her fault that she needed at least six hours of sleep to properly cut people open and fix whatever problem was ailing them. Six hours of sleep was the baseline. It was her human right.
Or so she told herself as she barreled down the street in Ino’s monster of SUV. Ino’s apartment was closer to the hospital, so sometimes she crashed there after a long shift and borrowed Ino’s car to get to work.
Ino had picked a career that didn’t require leaving multiple years of graduate school with burning dumpster fires of debt, which meant that Ino could splurge on giant tacky cars that Sakura suspected rich soccer moms would envy. Sakura jammed her sticky coffee mug into one of the fancy cup holders after taking a long and slightly demented swig. She felt it burning down her throat with a vicious satisfaction.
“I will be on time,” she muttered to herself.
Ino was always telling her to manifest what Sakura wanted for her life. Sakura had the feeling that Ino had meant bigger picture things, like a proper sleep schedule, dates with men that didn’t make her want to start digging a hole in her backyard so that she could perish in it, general contentment.
Sakura was willing to settle for being on time.
She pulled up to a stop sign, dutifully stopped while swearing at it, then started forward again.
This was when the bike materialized.
Sakura screamed as the ugly sound of metal colliding with metal sliced through the air. Her coffee sloshed back and doused her in burning liquid as she stomped on the brakes. There was a flurry of scrambled motion across the hood of the car—a body rolling over it too quickly for her to see what kind of person she had hit. Her heart pounded as she hurled her door open and raced around to see who it was.
“It’s alright, it’s alright, I’m a doctor.”
The man she had hit was crumpled in a wiry heap on the ground. He had a head of silver hair and her first thought was that she had committed eldercide. She’d killed a sweet, defenseless old man just because—
The sweet old man began to mutter a startling and colorful stream of curses under his breath in a voice that was decidedly not-elderly. He experimentally stretched a lanky arm, then leg, and shook them around a bit to make sure they still worked.
He looked up at her as she stood rooted to the spot.
Oh dear. He was her age. And he was attractive.
And she was covered in coffee that was leaving second degree burns up and down her body, not to mention her ugliest and oldest pair of scrubs.
He smiled. “I’m fine. I was running late, and I—”
He stopped mid-sentence. She watched his eyes travel to the hulking behemoth of suburban wealth—Ino’s SUV, his attacker. His eyes narrowed slightly. Then they traveled to her scrubs. She watched him think for a moment.
He flopped back against the pavement.
“Oh my god, it hurts.”
Sakura felt her jaw drop. “Like hell it hurts! I just saw you—”
He let out a theatrical groan. “I think you broke my—”
“I didn’t break shit! You were about to get up!”
He flopped around for a bit. “Ohhh, my arm, I can’t feel it.”
Sakura gestured wildly at the SUV. “This isn’t my car! Do you think this is my car? I have so much goddamn debt—”
“My head,” he moaned. “My head is spinning.”
Sakura felt like she was about to boil over. Her eye twitched. Then something occurred to her. “This wasn’t even my fucking fault! I stopped at that stop sign, you were the one who didn’t! I stopped even though I was late, and you were about to tell me that you had blown through it because you were late, too! I was the responsible late person in this scenario. Me!”
He blinked up at her through obnoxiously long eyelashes. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. I think I have concussion.”
Sakura let out a little shriek of fury. She whipped her phone out of her pocket and shrieked again when she saw what time it was.
“I don’t have time for this,” she hissed at him. “I have to go to the hospital.”
He laid back against the pavement in a limp and melodramatic sprawl. “Yes,” he said in a voice that suggested that he was valiantly holding back great pain. “I must be taken to the hospital.”
“No,” she snapped. “I have to go to the hospital because I work there. You need to go back to whatever grimy hole you crawled out of and disappear.”
He shot her an annoyed look. “Whatever shall I do,” he moaned. “If only the owner of a car with the license plate GRRLPWR hadn’t struck me down.”
Sakura pressed her fingers to her temples. Ino had gotten the license plate to be ironic, but it clearly wasn’t difficult for this man to remember. She evaluated her options.
“Fine, if you’re really hurt then let’s call you an ambulance.”
He suddenly looked shifty. Sakura’s eyes narrowed in the same way his had. “You do have insurance, don’t you?”
“What does that have to do with you smacking me with your girl power vehicle?”
Sakura wanted to kick him. It would be so easy, he was already on the ground. He must have seen the violence in her eyes because he edged away a bit.
Sakura looked at her phone again. She could call his bluff and get him an ambulance, but she would feel awful about it for weeks afterwards because even she thought the insurance system in this country was inhumane. She could drive off, but he had memorized Ino’s license plate number as he not so subtly kept hinting. She could stay here arguing to make him see reason—that she probably had a lower net worth than he did with all her debt—but she was already late to her first surgery of the day.
She stared at him. He stared back.
Sakura groaned. She swung open the passenger seat door. “Get in the fucking car. We’re going to the hospital.”
The car ride to the hospital was tense.
He sat in a scruffy and scraped-up heap in the passenger seat, peering around himself with interest. Sakura hated him a little bit more because he had made her load his bike into the back of the car as part of his injured charade. Sakura was not in a state of health where loading a bike into a car was easy.
“So what kind of doctor are you,” he asked.
“The angry kind.”
“Hm.”
He fiddled with the radio and Sakura smacked his hand. “Cut it out, this isn’t your car.”
“I thought it wasn’t your car either.”
“It isn’t,” she gritted.
He smiled. “So I think we both have equal right to the radio then.”
“What’s supposed to be wrong with you anyways?” she snapped. “Shouldn’t your pain be rendering you incapable of speech?”
“Oh, right.” He looked thoughtfully at his arm. “I think this is broken.”
Sakura barked a manic laugh. He startled a bit at the sound and she felt a vicious sort of satisfaction and embarrassment.
“You seem tired,” he observed.
Sakura loved it when men told her that she looked tired. She opened her mouth to tell him so when she had to stomp on the brakes. He had been distracting her so much that she had nearly blown through a stop sign.
He tsked. “I see this is a pattern for you.”
Sakura said nothing else for the rest of the drive.
The man followed Sakura into the hospital with an exaggerated limp. She refused to look behind herself as he hobbled along in her wake attracting stares.
The nurse in the OR reception jumped to her feet when she saw Sakura approaching. “Dr. Haruno, you’re late for—”
She broke off as she took in Sakura’s scrubs, which at this point were a giant coffee stain, and the lanky man hovering behind her.
“Did something happen?” she asked. Her eyes traveled to the man. “Is this your partner?”
“No,” said the man cheerfully. “Dr. Haruno hit me with her car this morning.”
His voice lingered over the two syllables in doctor. The nurse’s jaw dropped. Sakura wondered if she would lose her medical license for assaulting someone who wasn’t technically her patient on hospital grounds.
“Please,” Sakura managed to grit between her teeth. “Could you help me find some new scrubs?”
The nurse snapped back to attention. “Of course. Let’s see—”
“What about me?” the man said blandly, though Sakura suspected there was a teasing note hiding somewhere in his voice.
“You should go to the ER on the first floor,” said the nurse. “This floor is for scheduled surgeries.”
Sakura whipped around. “Yes,” she hissed. “Would you like a surgery? The idea of standing over you with a knife is quite appealing right now.”
He just smiled that infuriating smile. “Thank you for offering, but I think I’ll just need an X-ray for my broken arm.”
Sakura jabbed her finger into his chest. It was annoyingly hard. “I will deal with you later.”
As she swept away, she heard him mutter, “Looking forward to it.”
Sakura was so exhausted by the end of her shift that she had almost forgotten an unresolved problem was lurking for her in another part of the hospital. It had been eight hours, and surely he wasn’t petty enough to wait around for her that long? She started to trudge out when the OR nurse gestured her back.
“Kakashi is waiting for you in radiology.”
“Who?”
“The, um, man you hit with your car?”
Sakura sighed heavily. “It wasn’t my car,” she said in a dull monotone. She was beginning to feel like she would be saying that phrase until the day she died.
The nurse looked as though she didn’t understand why this distinction was important. Sakura decided to forgive her. She waved half-heartedly and made her way down towards radiology.
She heard laughing as she drew nearer. She peeked around the corner and saw Kakashi sitting with a group of radiology techs. He was utterly at ease with them, leaned back in one of their spinning chairs as if he too worked in the radiology unit.
One of them was telling a story and Kakashi was nodding along with the rest, but he seemed to be only half-listening. His grey eyes were unfocused and fixed on some distant point, as though he were mulling something over. Sakura took the opportunity to really study him without the haze of a blinding rage or panic.
He was lanky with a large amount of messy silver hair. The edges of his shirt and pants were a little threadbare, but in a way that seemed intentional. As though he knew his clothes were a little shabby and liked them better for the familiarity of them. He had a long nose, and a small mole at the corner of his mouth. Charming, she thought as she looked at him. He was utterly charming. She almost couldn’t believe this quiet man in a state of repose had made himself the root of so many of her problems.
Then her eyes caught on his arm.
She leapt out around the corner. “This is too far,” she shouted.
Kakashi startled and his eyes flicked to her. Sakura was thrilled to finally see him unbalanced. She brandished a triumphant finger as he tried to compose a response to her battle cry.
“You can’t just have them give you a cast because you’re pretending your arm is broken! That’s a waste of resources! How did you even get your greedy little hands on one? It is irresponsible, and selfish, and—”
“Dr. Haruno,” one of the cowering techs whispered. “His arm is really broken.”
Sakura’s head snapped back to Kakashi so quickly that she heard her neck crack. She swallowed thickly. “It is?” she asked in a small voice.
He had clearly gotten over the initial shock and was now smiling faintly. He thumbed through some of the scans sitting on the desk, then fished one out and waved it at her without any real malice. “Yup. Broken radius.”
Sakura deflated like a punctured balloon. “Oh,” she said softly.
He tilted his head to the side, considering her. The radiology techs began to slink out of the room.
“You seem tired,” he finally said. This time the words didn’t have the edge of a joke to them. He said them more gently, in a way that was almost concerned.
Sakura collapsed into one of the spinning chairs. She let her head rock back so she could stare at the ceiling. “I am tired.”
Suddenly she wanted to cry. The idea of hauling herself home to eat and shower was paralyzing. Maybe she could just curl up in some supply closet for the night and pray that this man and all her other problems would vanish.
She felt the tap of something on her arm. She looked over and saw he was holding out a sharpie. She stared at it, baffled.
“Would you like to draw something on my cast?” he asked.
She blinked.
“It can be obscene. I won’t mind.”
She sniffled and took the sharpie. She uncapped it and stared blankly at his proffered arm. “I don’t know what to draw,” she muttered.
“What’s your name?”
She looked back up at him. It seemed impossible that this man could cause her so much grief without knowing something as fundamental as her name. “You don’t know my name?”
“I know you’re Dr. Haruno, but I don’t know your first name.”
She studied the curve of his smile. “My name is Sakura.”
His smile grew. “Why don’t you draw that then.”
She began to draw a little tree. She dug a pink highlighter out of the desk for the blossoms. When she finished, he tilted it from side to side and examined her work from different angles.
“Very nice,” he said.
“Thank you.”
They sat in silence. Sakura was surprised to find that it was a nice silence, one that made her feel a little more human. He finally turned to look at her with a smile still tugging at the corners of his lips.
“I forgive you for hitting me with your car, Sakura.”
She was so excited by the olive branch that she didn’t bother to correct him when he said it was her car. She grinned in relief. “Really?”
He nodded, the sharp line of his jaw bobbing up and down. “Yes, I do. The people here have a very high opinion of you, even if they’re all a little terrified of you.”
A warm feeling unfurled in her chest. “So you won’t be harassing me? Because it was an accident and it was your fault to begin with?”
He gave her a smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. “Oh no. I’ll be suing you for all you’re worth.”
Sakura’s jaw dropped.
He patted her shoulder, then held out a little scrap of paper with a phone number scrawled on it. He gave her one last smile.
“I’ll see you in court, Sakura.”
“You did what,” Ino screeched.
Sakura cringed as Ino gesticulated at the dinged-up bike still in the back of her SUV. Kakashi had walked away without making plans to retrieve the bike—at least until he had messaged her to set up a meeting with their lawyers. Sakura had let out a hysterical bubble of laughter at that. Lawyers? How was she going to afford a lawyer? Especially when it was all his fault.
“Forehead,” Ino hissed. “I’m going to kill you.”
An idea occurred to Sakura. “Do you still have that fancy pantsuit?”
“Am I still a corporate monkey? Yes, I have the fucking pantsuit.”
“Pretend to be my lawyer! We just need to out bluff him!”
Ino braced a palm against her perfect face. “Sakura, how am I going to pretend to be a lawyer?”
“It’s just the first meeting with his other lawyer! Google what a settlement is! I think that means we won’t actually have to go to court. If you wear the pantsuit and use big words, you might be able to convince—”
“You’re deranged. Completely deranged.”
“I know you watch those lawyer shows!”
“I also watch Greys Anatomy! Do you want to bring me along to work so I can perform a surgery?”
“Please,” Sakura said. Her eyes flooded with genuine tears. They were tears of exhaustion and frustration rather than actual sadness, but they were quite easy to summon because she had been holding them back all day. “Please, Ino. I can’t afford a lawyer right now, you know I can’t.”
Ino groaned as she tugged Sakura into a grudging hug. “This is going to fail miserably,” she muttered into the top of Sakura’s unwashed hair. “But I’ll give them hell for you.”
Sakura sniffled. “That’s all I ask.”
Ino slammed down the binder they had picked out as the most “lawyer-ish” at OfficeMax fifteen minutes ago. She extended an immaculately manicured hand.
“I’m Dr. Haruno’s representation, Ino Yamanaka Esquire. And you are?”
The man chewing a toothpick extended his hand across the café table. “Genma almost Esquire. At your service.”
“Almost?” Sakura demanded. She looked at Kakashi, who was infuriatingly relaxed in the chair across from her. “You told me to bring a lawyer! Is this man not a lawyer?”
The toothpick man flashed a half smile that was disarmingly attractive. “I’m almost a lawyer. Six more months if I pass the bar.” He held up his crossed fingers and Sakura noticed that Ino was looking at them in a rather evaluating kind of way. Sakura kicked her under the table. Ino could evaluate the opposing counsel’s nice hands when Sakura wasn’t being sued.
Kakashi gave Sakura a lazy smile. “Genma is allowed to represent me even though he’s just a student. You can even check the law.”
Sakura fumed. “I must confer with my counsel.”
Kakashi gestured elaborately with his hand in a go ahead kind of way. Sakura refused to be a hypocrite and assess how nice his hands were as he did so. She hauled Ino to a point five or so feet away.
“First of all, stop making bedroom eyes at the enemy!”
Ino dragged her eyes off Genma. “I have no idea what you mean. And you didn’t tell me the man suing you was attractive! You made it sound like he was this nasty little pest—”
“He is,” Sakura screamed softly.
Genma and Kakashi looked over at the increased volume. Sakura forced a smile and flapped her hand at them. They each went back to their coffees, clearly amused.
“Is he allowed to do this,” Sakura asked more quietly. “Can that man really represent him? Or is he just testing us?”
Ino glared. “Why are you asking me like I should know? I’m not actually a lawyer! We could google it.”
“We can’t stand over here looking it up on our phones, how obvious would that be?”
They stared at each other for a moment. Without breaking eye contact, Ino fished her phone out of her purse, then pointedly began to type a search query. She skimmed the results and sighed.
“It’s kind of confusing, but I think they’re right?”
They were off to a fabulous start.
When they settled back in at the table, Genma’s easy smile shifted into something harder and more calculating.
“So I understand that your client was driving a vehicle that wasn’t hers.”
“She was,” Ino said briskly.
“And she was a permissive driver of the car?”
“Are you asking if I stole—”
Ino kicked Sakura under the table. “She was.”
“So the owner of the car will also be liable for any damages suffered by my client, not to mention higher insurance premiums.”
“Potentially,” Ino muttered, though she looked as though she had bitten into something sour.
“Those higher insurance premiums add up in the long run. It would be in your best interest to pursue a settlement with us now.”
Ino’s eyes narrowed. “I think we will decide what our best interest is.”
Their arguing began in earnest. Genma, despite his relaxed appearance, was a cunning and sharp negotiator. Ino held her own by repeating variations of what he said back to him with brief injections of their wine drunk research from the night before. Their arguing grew more vicious, but they each had a look in their eyes that made Sakura feel like she was watching a long and elaborate bout of foreplay. She found herself glancing at Kakashi to commiserate, then remembering herself and looking away angrily when he wiggled his eyebrows at her.
“So beyond his medical bills,” Ino said, “you have no right to claim damages. His injury doesn’t affect his job, and he has no one relying on him for—”
“Actually,” Genma interrupted smoothly, “that is the crux of our argument. Kakashi does have someone relying on him.”
Sakura was surprised by the sudden feeling of dismay that swept over her. Who cared whether or not Kakashi had someone relying on him, whatever that meant. She glanced up from the cold coffee she had been half-heartedly stirring to find him watching her with his annoyingly perceptive grey eyes, no doubt noticing her disappointment. Sakura barely restrained herself from making a rude gesture.
“We will be claiming loss of consortium,” Genma said, resting his palms on the table as if he had just laid down some kind of trump card.
Sakura glanced at Ino. Her pokerface hadn’t shifted, but this term hadn’t come up in their manic research from the night before. Sakura tried to sneakily pull out her phone to google the phrase under the table.
“That is utterly unreasonable,” Ino said. Sakura figured that was a safe response. Most of what Genma and Kakashi had said so far was unreasonable, so it was safe to assume this new phrase hadn’t changed the general trend.
Genma waved his hand up and down the length of Kakashi’s cast. Sakura saw the tree she had drawn there and wondered how she could “accidentally” dump stale coffee on his cast to ruin it for him.
“His arm prevents him from performing the usual physical tasks that are necessary to maintaining the health of his relationship,” Genma continued.
Sakura snorted loudly. Kakashi’s brow rose. She looked back down at her phone, which had finally loaded her search results for loss of consortium.
The loss of love, companionship, comfort, care, assistance, protection, affection, society, and moral support; and. The loss of the enjoyment of sexual relations, or the ability to have children.
Sakura looked back up, furious. “There is no way having a hairline fracture in your arm prevents you from having sex.”
Kakashi’s other brow rose to join the first. “Who said anything about sex?”
Genma glanced shrewdly between them. “The party claiming loss of consortium is Pakkun.”
“Pakkun?” Ino demanded.
“My dog,” said Kakashi. “He likes to play fetch. I can’t throw as far with my left arm.”
Of course he had a dog. Sakura could just see it now— some massive animal that followed him around and helped him bully his way through the world. She was probably lucky it hadn’t been there for him to sic on her.
As if he knew what she was thinking, Kakashi reached into his tote bag and pulled out a palmful of fur with gleaming, beady eyes. He smiled as he extended his palm to her. “This is Pakkun.”
Sakura stared at the sleepy and disgruntled pug balanced in his hand. She felt the overwhelming urge to snatch it from him. It wasn’t right for such a bad man to have such a cute dog.
She reached out and Kakashi deftly swept his hand back to cradle the dog against his chest. “Ah, ah, ah. No petting Pakkun until you agree to respect his loss of consortium.”
Sakura brandished her phone at him. “This is idiotic! Your arm isn’t permanently fractured. No jury is going to rule in favor of Pakkun’s loss of companionship, comfort, care, assistance, protection, affection, society, and moral support.”
“Did you really just google it?” Genma asked.
Ino slammed her palm against the table. “My client isn’t an attorney. You can’t blame her for researching terms she isn’t familiar with.”
“Yeah,” Sakura muttered. “I’m just a surgeon. How embarrassingly inadequate of me.”
“Pakkun is very particular about how he likes to play fetch,” Kakashi said. “He has suffered a great deal these last few days.”
“This doesn’t change the fact that no jury will buy this,” Ino snapped.
“Yes, well, your client needs to evaluate whether she’s willing to pay your fees in a courtroom. Not to mention the involvement of the insurance companies—”
“Cut the bullshit, what do you two actually want?” Ino interrupted. She’d evidently tired of LARPing as a lawyer.
Genma’s eyes gleamed. “We’ve prepared two settlement options. We’re open to accepting either based on your client’s preferences.”
“How generous,” Sakura said dryly. Kakashi inclined his head to her in acknowledgement as he scratched Pakkun’s ears.
“The first option is a payment of ten thousand dollars.”
Sakura gaped. “That is—”
“The second is a date with my client.”
For the first time since they had all sat down, the table was utterly silent. Then all hell broke loose.
Ino began jabbering about Sakura was worth much more than ten thousand dollars—probably at least twenty thousand—while Genma was loudly claiming that it was a valid, though unorthodox request.
“That is prostitution,” Sakura hissed at Kakashi.
He took a delicate one-handed sip of his coffee. “Only if the date goes well.”
Her jaw dropped. “If you think I would touch your slimy, swindling body with anything other than a ten-foot pole—”
Genma interceded in the quickly devolving situation. “My client is willing to sign an agreement to pursue no further legal action against you after one date of your choice.” He took a long breath after managing to get the words out in one uninterrupted stream. Sakura considered what he had said while eyeing Kakashi, who seemed to be making at least a modest attempt to appear well-behaved.
The idea of Kakashi signing something that would prohibit him from bothering her was very appealing. Sakura didn’t want to consider it, and yet…
“What if the date was here at this café?” she demanded. “And it only had to be fifteen minutes?”
Kakashi smiled pleasantly. “That would be fine.”
Sakura studied him warily. There had to be some trick buried in this, but if he signed a document…
“Fine,” she bit out. “You can buy my coffee tomorrow, and I’ll drink it at this table for exactly fifteen minutes.”
“You went through all of this to get a date,” Ino asked incredulously. “When you could have weaseled real money out of her?”
Sakura frowned at Ino. She was a little too shocked by the idea of someone wanting to take her out on a date.
Kakashi shrugged. “If all goes well, I might end up as her stay-at-home husband. Her earning potential in roughly ten or so years means I might get a nice car of my own.” He looked back at Sakura. “I’d like a blue one. Just in case you decide to surprise me.”
Sakura stared at him for a very long time. She turned to Ino.
“I’ve changed my mind, I’d rather pay the ten thousand.”
“No, you would not!” She gave Kakashi an assessing look. “You know, I think he might actually be good for you.”
Kakashi grinned at Ino. “It’s so nice to finally meet Sakura’s friends.”
Epilogue
When Sakura showed up for her doomsday date, it was after a twelve-hour night shift and nothing felt real. She shot Kakashi a warning look before taking a wary sip of her coffee. She only had to last fifteen minutes, but he had proven that he could push her to the limits of her sanity within mere seconds.
He propped his chin up on his good hand as he watched her. Sakura silently dared him to tell her that she looked tired.
“How are you doing?”
It was so unexpected that Sakura had to laugh. “Seriously?”
He smiled faintly. “Seriously.”
Well, Sakura thought. He had asked for it.
She began to complain. Sakura didn’t usually have the time or energy to complain, so it was cathartic to finally sit down and have the space to do so. She complained about her work, which led to him asking follow-up questions so he could understand what she was talking about. She complained about cleaning up after Ino’s messes in the kitchen whenever she stayed over, which led to her telling him about how she had met Ino when they were young. An hour went by before she realized how much time had passed. She stopped mid-sentence and looked at him intently.
She realized that this infuriating man was a good listener, and that she actually enjoyed his sly sense of humor when he wasn’t weaponizing it against her. She realized that she still knew almost nothing about him.
And even more surprising, she realized that she wanted to know more about him. She wondered what Kakashi would complain about. She wondered where he had been going when he blew through the stop sign.
He just watched her as she thought this through, smiling in a way that was no longer quite so infuriating.
He had the good sense not to say I told you so until several years later.
Epilogue 2.0 – six months after the first date
Sakura stared up at Kakashi’s face from where her head had settled on his lap. He always looked so serious when he read. Part of her loved to observe him in a state of concentration, but another part of her always wanted to disrupt it. She tried to read the upside down title of his orange book. It was a new one— she knew because he had giggled about it the whole way home.
Icha Icha First Date.
She repressed a smile. How sappy—and probably horny—of him. It made her think back to an earlier, angrier time.
“Why did you ask for the date anyways?”
He peered down at her over the top of his book. “What date?”
“Our first date. Which part of screaming coffee-stained doctor who hit you with a car made you want to ask me out? Aside from the prospect of getting a blue car, which is never happening.”
He set his book to the side and smiled down at her. “What if I asked for one again really, really nicely—“
She smacked his wandering hand away in a great display of willpower. “Kakashi, I’m serious!”
“Sakuraaa, I’m serious, too,” he said, playing the game of repeating their names back and forth. “If you don’t know by now that nearly being killed by a lovely and angry woman checks just about all my boxes—“
She flapped a disgusted hand at him, though she was smiling. “I see, so me hitting you with a car was just the realization of some sexual fantasy?”
“Well, one of them at least.”
“Fine,” she said with an exaggerated tone of hurt. “You don’t want to take my questions seriously, that’s fine.”
He sighed and looked down at her, all exasperation and tenderness. “I think it was when you drew on my cast.”
“Really?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Up until that point, I was just planning on getting my bike out of Ino’s car and leaving you alone. Everyone at the hospital said such nice things about you, and all I had really wanted was the ride.”
“You couldn’t have just told me you wanted a ride without torturing me?”
He hummed. “You would have been very upset if you thought my arm was actually broken. I knew my arm was broken, but you didn’t have to know. I decided it would be easier for you to manage anger than guilt.”
“You told me your arm was broken in the car!”
“Did you believe me?”
No, she hadn’t. She went silent for a moment thinking about how his horrible behavior was somehow, in its own twisted and obnoxious way… kind. Even if he had put on a polite brave face and pretended that his arm was fine like a normal person would have, she wouldn’t have believed him. Only the farcical, self-interested performance he had put on was enough to banish the worry and guilt from her mind.
“The tree changed my mind,” he continued, lost in thought.
Sakura frowned. “The tree I drew was that good?”
He laughed quietly. “No, it was very bad.” He swept up a piece of her hair that had fanned over his legs and began to weave it into a nonsensical pattern. “You drew it very carefully though. You were very serious about making sure my cast looked nice. And you held my arm very gently as you did it.”
“You didn’t ask out any of the other medical professionals who held your arm gently that day.” Her eyes narrowed. “Or did you?”
He gave her a dry look. “You were the first one dumb enough to say yes—ow!”
“Kakashi!”
“I’m just saying—I had seen you go from a loud and vicious force of nature to a serious surgeon about to operate on other human beings. And then you came and sat with me and drew something on my arm very gently.” He scowled down at her to discourage any more elbowing. “I was impressed by your range. I’m still impressed. Every single day.”
There was an insult buried in there somewhere, but Sakura decided to ignore it. “So you decided to threaten me with legal action instead of just asking me on a date like a regular person?”
“Would you have said yes? Or would you have told me that you were too busy?”
Sakura glared up at him. He had always been annoyingly perceptive.
He tucked the piece of hair he had been playing with back behind her ear. “I just needed my foot in the door. Either I’d get a date, or I would be a little richer. Win, win.”
“You’re never getting that car.”
He smiled. “I never say never.”