Archive of Our Own

Stay up all night
Real love for the first time
And I can't tell if this is all a dream or if I'm really here
But as long as I can feel you I don't really care, I don't really care

Can we pretend like it's just you and me?
I wanna act like I can feel something
And you don't have to give it back to me
'Cause I can't promise much of anything

I see in shades of grey, I'm going blind again
But when it comes to you my world is red
I see in shades of grey, losing my mind again
But when it comes to you my world is deep red

-'Deep Red', Movements

Some days, when Tenzō wakes Kakashi is already up, halfway through breakfast with a plate of whatever he’s made kept warm for Tenzō on the stove.

Other days, Tenzō wakes up with Kakashi’s arms around his middle and Kakashi’s somehow always cold nose pressing into his neck and he drifts back into sleep that way.

Other days, Tenzō rolls over and kisses Kakashi good morning, crawls on top of him and kisses him until they’re both laughing and breathless and then they wring an orgasm or two out of each other before finally leaving the warmth of the bed.

Still other days, Tenzō wakes first and leaves his lover cocooned in the blankets, a dog or two lying on his feet and his silver hair haphazard over the pillows. On those days he’ll make a pot of tea and bring his cup back through to the bedroom, sit cross-legged on the floor and just watch Kakashi sleep.

The mornings are not all exactly the same but there is a thread that carries through all of them, day upon day and week upon week. Every morning brings contentment, each waking a new flush of satisfaction that warms Tenzō to his bones even on the coldest of winter days. Never in his life has Tenzō looked forward to each new day so very much.

In winter, their little cabin is almost lost in the deep snowdrifts. Tenzō crunches his way over the carpet of white, weighed down by an armful of logs he has spent most of the morning cutting for firewood. Smoke curls out of the chimney and Kakashi opens the door for him before he gets there.

“Thought you might not make it back this time,” he drawls, offering his cheek for a kiss that Tenzō gladly gives.

“But you made coffee just in case?”

Tenzō stomps on the doormat to clear the snow from his boots, then clomps over to the cellar hatch that Kakashi has left open for him to deposit his double armful of wood.

Kakashi hums as he follows him through to the modest kitchen.

“I was prepared for all eventualities.”

The cabin isn’t much, but it’s the first thing that Tenzō has ever built purely for his own enjoyment. And Kakashi’s, too, but Kakashi’s happiness is always Tenzō’s happiness just as much; anything that pleases the two of them and serves the life they’ve built together counts double. He built it with his bare hands from trees he felled himself rather than using his mokuton.

Neither of them has all that much use for chakra out here in the forest. They’re all but retired now.

Kakashi pours two cups of coffee then turns his attention to the pot that’s bubbling merrily on the stove. Tenzō steps in close to wrap both arms around him from behind and breathe in his familiar scent.

“Smells good.”

“Me or the food?”

“Both.”

Tenzō reaches up and pinches Kakashi’s cheek to confirm that he’s smiling.

“You’re in a good mood,” his lover observes as he stirs the stew.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Kakashi doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t have to. Tenzō knows what this silence means and he chooses to once again ignore the implications.

“Let’s go back to bed,” he says, sliding a cold hand under Kakashi’s shirt and feeling his lover’s stomach jump at the shock of it.

“The stew,” Kakashi protests, though it’s a particularly weak effort. He turns to show Tenzō his smile and Tenzō kisses the corner of his mouth.

“The stew will be fine. Come on. I want you now.”

“You’re awful,” Kakashi says but his smile is growing all the time. Tenzō’s hand quests higher inside his shirt to tweak a nipple and he hums low in his throat.

“You know what? Forget the bedroom. I’m having you right here.”

“Oh, are you?” Kakashi’s tone is coy but he raises his arms over his head, giving Tenzō access to all of his body. Tenzō eagerly divests him of his shirt and pants and then spins him to press him back against the low countertop.

He won’t ever get tired of the sight of Kakashi like this; his pale skin, toned muscles, silvery hair and old scars. He loves how quickly a blush always appears over the apples of Kakashi’s cheeks when Tenzō is looking at him, appreciating him. He skims his hand from Kakashi’s collar bone down over his chest to settle around the jut of his hip and Kakashi wets his lips.

“Kiss me, Tenzō,” he says, voice soft and low.

There’s no reason for Tenzō to wait, so he doesn’t.

After making love in the kitchen, they eat together in front of the fire. It’s early afternoon but the sky is already darkening outside, heavy grey clouds rolling in from the north. Tenzō doesn’t mind the clouds; they only remind him of the swirling grey of Kakashi’s right eye. When lightning storms come, he thinks of chidori. The winter snow drifts remind him of Kakashi’s soft, fine hair.

“What will we do tomorrow?” Kakashi asks him when it’s full dark and they’re lounging together in a pile of pillows and blankets, reading and drinking tea. Kakashi’s head is pillowed on Tenzō’s thigh and he’s idly stroking Tenzō’s knee. It tickles a little but not so much that Tenzō tries to move away.

Tenzō considers the question, like he does every evening.

“Why worry about it now?”

Kakashi accepts this, as he always does.

Through a chink in the storm shutters, Tenzō can see a sliver of the moon. It’s unnaturally red.

Blood moon , he thinks, turning away with a slight shiver. There must be a draft coming in. He’ll mend the shutters in the morning.

For now he settles a hand in Kakashi’s hair and returns to his book.

Tenzō never goes into the cellar alone and he doesn’t let Kakashi, either.

It’s stupid. It’s superstitious, perhaps. It’s just a feeling he gets deep in his gut and in his bones, telling him that something awful is waiting for him down there.

When he and Kakashi drop off logs that one or other of them has cut down, or fetch food that they carefully preserved and stored during the bountiful autumn, they always go together. It’s the only thing Tenzō absolutely insists on. Kakashi rolls his eyes sometimes but he indulges him.

Inside the cellar is a second door that Tenzō doesn’t remember making. It’s cut into the floor and it can’t possibly lead anywhere because beneath the cabin there’s only the packed, hard earth. The door has a metal lock plate set with a large keyhole. Tenzō has never tried the handle but he knows that it won’t be locked if he does. He stays away from that door. Kakashi has never seemed to notice that it’s there at all; Tenzō understands why but if he doesn’t give that understanding form in his mind he finds that he can ignore it quite easily.

The same way that he ignores his knowledge of exactly what he would find beneath that door if he were to open it up.

Life is effortless. Tenzō is happy.

In summer the trees are heavy with fruit so ripe it falls to the earth to make food for the rodents and insects and birds. Tenzō sits on the porch step with a slender branch and a pocket knife, whittling with no other purpose than to busy his hands and pass the time. He could use his mokuton to form whatever shape he’s trying to sculpt with just a thought, but he prefers to craft his knick knacks by hand. It isn’t about the finished product so much as it’s about the process of making.

He can’t remember the last time he used his mokuton, or any other jutsu for that matter. He can’t remember if this is their first summer in the cabin, or their second or their third.

Tenzō doesn’t mind that he can’t remember.

As Tenzō idly scans the horizon, Kakashi strides out from amongst the trees that line it with a basket full of fruit in each hand. The two of them will pass the evening making jams and chutneys out of it all, pies and puddings and crumbles. They will infuse alcohol with raspberries and cherries and blackcurrants. They will eat fresh damson slices from each others’ fingers and lick the sticky juice from each others’ lips.

Halfway between the cabin and the trees, Kakashi stops walking and tilts his head like he’s listening.

Tenzō hears it, then. He thinks of it as 'the chorus' and it exists in this place always, faint as chatter from the floor below. It’s as indistinct as it is quiet, but that matters little. Tenzō knows what it is and what it means.

“Kakashi,” he calls, getting to his feet and waving an arm over his head.

Kakashi’s attention snaps to him like he’s coming out of a trance. His eye first clears and then narrows in a warm smile and he jogs the rest of the way back to the cabin.

“What did you pick today?” Tenzō asks, peering into Kakashi’s baskets.

“All of your favourites,” Kakashi says. He places the baskets at Tenzō’s feet and settles beside him.

Tenzō sees walnuts among the sweet red fruits. He smiles.

“I baked bread this morning.”

Kakashi hums. “I’ll make butter to go with it.”

Tenzō digs a little deeper into one of the baskets, gently moving aside berries and leafy plants. Right at the bottom he sees a fruit he doesn’t recognise. It’s red, like most things that grow in their forest, but the brownish-red of dried blood. It has a thick ridged skin that opens outwards at the top to reveal the softer, lighter fruit within.

Tenzō picks up the strange fruit and holds it in the palm of his hand. A chill rushes through him and he immediately wants to let go of the fruit but finds that he can’t.

The chorus is getting louder. There’s nothing to drown it out, no distracting pleasure in that moment to keep Tenzō from listening. The confusion, the chaos and the screaming come to him from a distant place that he can’t reach and neither does he want to. An answering scream bubbles in Tenzō's chest, a plea to be left alone to live out his life in peace, but he cannot give it voice.

Louder, again louder, until Tenzō wants to clap his hands over his ears although he already knows that it would be useless. He has tried that trick before.

“The moon,” Kakashi says.

He’s staring up at the sky that’s darkening by the second until the only light is from the moon and the pulsing fruit in Tenzō’s hand. Kakashi opens his right eye and it is a reflection of that blood-red moon.

The screaming is all the time getting louder, the air is thick with the smells of blood and smoke and death and Kakashi is moving away from him. Tenzō wants to reach out but his hands are suddenly full of fruit, those awful fruit. A malevolent power throbs in each heavy orb as they begin to burst free of their skins and—

With a heaving gasp like surfacing from deep water Tenzō jerks his arm back and pitches the fruit as far as he can, away, towards the tree line.

“Kakashi!”

Kakashi’s face is blank. His eyes are mirrors. The sky is dark.

“Kakashi! Look at me.”

Kakashi blinks and turns away from the sky.

A cloud moves across the moon and covers it. The sun comes back out.

Kakashi smiles at him, a slightly confused smile like he isn’t sure where he’s been.

Tenzō carefully nudges the basket away from them both with one foot.

“Don’t ever pick that fruit again,” he says. “Don’t touch it.”

“Okay,” Kakashi says agreeably.

“And don’t look at the moon,” Tenzō says. His heart is pounding and his hands are clammy. “Look at me instead. Only at me.”

Kakashi beams at him.

“Okay, Tenzō.”

it isn’t real it isn’t real it isn’t real

Blood moon , Tenzō thinks, looking out at the sky from their bedroom window. He wants to close the curtains but something prevents him from doing so. It’s a warm night and he can feel sweat on his skin.

Kakashi’s hand curls around the back of his neck and tugs him down. Tenzō lets out a grateful sigh and claims his lover’s mouth in a soft kiss.

“How do you want me tonight?” Kakashi murmurs against his lips.

“Just like this,” Tenzō replies, trailing a hand down Kakashi’s bare chest and delighting in the goosebumps he raises there. Kakashi bends one knee and hooks his leg around Tenzō’s thigh.

They’re in between breathless kisses, both of them flushed with exertion, when Kakashi says something strange. Tenzō has a hand pressed over his lover’s heart, grounded by its steady beat while his other hand cradles Kakashi’s head. Both of Kakashi’s hands rest on Tenzō’s hips, urging him on as they make slow, passionate love. Their eyes meet in the most intimate of gazes.

“Just remember that,” Kakashi says.

Tenzō frowns down at him.

“Remember what?”

Kakashi sighs and kisses him sweetly on the forehead where his brown hair has stuck with sweat.

“We’re never going to have a happy ending,” he says.

The sound drops out of the world, leaving only static as Tenzō stares helplessly down at where his hand rests on Kakashi’s chest. Their skin is in contrast; his own brightly lit while Kakashi is in shadow.

It isn’t only because Kakashi is beneath him; he’s repelling the light in the room.

“We’ll never have a happy ending,” Kakashi says, looking mildly up at him. “Remember that.”

Tenzō can’t pretend anymore.

Loving Kakashi came almost as naturally to him as breathing. He met Kakashi, he got to know Kakashi, he fell in love with Kakashi. It felt like the natural order of things.

The most wondrous part of all was that Kakashi loved him back. Neither of them ever said it out loud, but Tenzō felt it in his bones. He knew it.

Kakashi was his first kiss, his best kiss. He lost his virginity to Kakashi after a week-long ANBU mission when they were still chakra-exhausted and covered in bruises. They trudged back to Konoha and showered in the barracks and then Kakashi pulled Tenzō by the hand to his private quarters and laid him down on his bedroll. Tenzō was eighteen and it was the best night of his life. Kakashi kissed him and laughed into his mouth when Tenzō tugged at his clothes with hands that were eager but entirely lacking in finesse. Kakashi showed him how to do it, Kakashi let him do it and Tenzō lasted all of three minutes inside him but Kakashi only kissed him and said they could do it again in the morning, and they did .

Tenzō was giddily in love and Kakashi was his his his .

But he never truly had Kakashi. His senpai gave him access to his body but his mind and his heart remained locked doors.

The last time they ever slept together was the only time that Kakashi’s guard slipped.

“We’re never gonna have a happy ending,” he mumbled against Tenzō’s shoulder, hiding his face there like it was a big, embarrassing secret. “Just remember that.”

Tenzō was too drunk on the feel of Kakashi around him to make any sense of it then. Kakashi didn’t repeat himself or elaborate but only groaned softly and spent between their bodies. A minute later Tenzō followed him over the edge, holding his breath when it happened.

It wasn’t until the morning after that Tenzō recalled the words enough to be disturbed by them.

“Do you really think that?”

“Hm?”

Kakashi looked at him indifferently, combing through his wild silver hair with his fingers. 

“You don’t think we can be happy? Or that we already are?”

Kakashi looked away.

“Come on, Tenzō. You know what this is.”

“No,” Tenzō said, still naked in Kakashi’s bed while he watched his captain getting dressed. “Actually, I don’t think I do.”

“It’s just sex,” Kakashi said.

Tenzō frowned.

“ This is just sex to you?”

Kakashi nodded as he zipped up his vest.

A thousand arguments and protestations leapt to the tip of Tenzō’s tongue but he swallowed all of them back down. He knew Kakashi too well. A confrontation wouldn’t get him what he wanted. Only time could do that much.

“I see,” he said, finally leaving the warm sanctuary of the bed to get dressed in turn.

“It was never anything serious, was it?”

Tenzō again held his tongue.

“I just didn’t want to lead you on, that’s all,” Kakashi said, tying his hitai-ite over his right eye. “I thought you should know, in case—”

“I never had any illusions,” Tenzō said flatly.

It both was and was not a lie. He’d had hopes, sky high ones, but he was also a realist. He knew in his heart that what he and Kakashi had was anything but casual, but he’d inured himself to disappointment and accepted whatever his captain was willing to give.

He’d met Kakashi where he stood, but Kakashi was retreating and Tenzō could not—would not follow.

He found out from the ANBU commander that Kakashi was being pulled from the ranks and reassigned as a jōnin-sensei. He let their final weeks as teammates pass without comment and acted like there was nothing significant about their very last mission together. Kakashi himself never mentioned that he was leaving. He just left.

Tenzō told himself that Kakashi had been right, if only because it had been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Kakashi had never allowed that they—that he—could be happy.

Tenzō locked his love away in a sturdy cabinet in his heart and moved on for the sake of them both. It didn’t do any good to dream.

It’s a dream.

Tenzō doesn’t remember how he ended up there, but he knows that it isn’t real.

But, he thinks as he skims his hand down Kakashi’s bare back, it feels real enough. He slides his tongue over the hollow of Kakashi’s throat, savours the salt tang of his sweat, tangles his fingers through Kakashi’s silver hair and listens to him sigh.

They’ve been there for months already, or has it been years? They have a life together. Tenzō isn’t sure that it matters all that much whether it’s a dream or not.

He doesn’t have to wake up, does he?

Kakashi picks fruit in the forest (but never the dried blood-coloured fruit, the screaming fruit, no, never). Tenzō carves and whittles on the porch. They eat together, sleep together, spend every minute of every day together.

Tenzō wonders how he never questioned it before.

He starts to go for walks, long walks through the forest. He walks for hours, he walks until it should by all rights be getting dark but every time he gets back to the cabin it’s still daylight and Kakashi is there waiting for him.

“I cooked fish,” he says.

“There’s firewood in the cellar,” he says.

“I love you, Tenzō,” he says.

Kakashi had never said that out loud in Konoha.

Where are they anyway, if not in Konoha?

“Come walking with me,” Tenzō asks one day.

It’s winter again and snow lies thick on the ground although he’s never actually seen it snowing. Kakashi is content in their living room, a checked blanket around his shoulders and a steaming mug of tea cradled in both hands.

“Walking to where?”

“Show me the stream where you catch all of those fish,” Tenzō says.

“It’ll be frozen now,” Kakashi says.

Tenzō stares into the dancing flames in the fireplace and he can almost see faces there, people that he used to know.

The blonde boy, what is his name? The girl with hair the colour of flower petals. The pale boy who paints, or does he write?

The flames shift and they’re gone.

“Show me where the fruits and walnuts grow, then,” Tenzō says.

“Wouldn’t you rather stay indoors?” Kakashi asks, looking at him fondly with the barest hint of a smile. “Wouldn’t you rather be here with me?”

Yes. Yes, he would.

He’s never wanted anything else.

Tenzō stays indoors that day, and the next.

The moon is red every night. It stays winter for a long time. Eventually, the sun stops coming out at all.

“We’re never gonna have a happy ending,” Kakashi says to him in bed at night, tenderly touching his cheek, his lips. He rubs the pad of one finger over Tenzō’s incisors.

Not out there. Only in here.

Tenzō rolls them over and Kakashi curls his warm arms around him and kisses him until he forgets that it’s only a dream.

But he can’t forget. Not anymore.

“I’m going into the cellar.”

“Okay,” Kakashi says mildly, not looking up from where he’s darning his socks.

“You should come with me.”

Kakashi lays aside his work and follows agreeably.

Tenzō is afraid. He’s so horribly afraid. His stomach rolls and cramps, his legs feel like jelly and his breaths come as hard and as fast as if he’d been running for his life.

The door in the floor is exactly where it always is. There’s a warm breeze blowing through the keyhole and the cracks in the old wood. The breeze carries the scent of ashes and spilled blood and the sound of weapons clashing and high-pitched screams.

Tenzō looks at the door for a long, long time.

Kakashi touches his shoulder.

“Let’s go back upstairs.”

Tenzō looks at him and for a second he can see right through him to the wall behind and through the wall to the red-lit snow outside.

This isn’t his home. This isn’t anywhere. His happiness is not true. This Kakashi is not his Kakashi.

Tenzō crouches and puts his hand to the wood of the door.

He might never be this happy again in the real world. If he walks through that door he could be walking towards certain and painful death. It’s a step he still isn’t certain he’ll be able to take. His Kakashi could already be dead. There might be no place for Tenzō there at all.

But…

He shifts onto his knees, bends and presses his ear to the door.

The voices he hears are voices that he knows, and they’re not screaming anymore.

“Tenzō,” Kakashi says behind him. “Tenzō, let’s go back upstairs.”

Yamato. Where is Yamato?

The voices are panicked, pained, exhausted, but he knows them.

Captain!

Yamato!

Damn it, Yamato, come on!

He jerks upright, heart slamming hard against his ribs.

The Kakashi in the cellar has disappeared now but through the door he heard…

Tenzō grasps the iron door handle and pulls; the door lifts easily. He pulls it all the way open to crash onto the cellar floor and stares into a rectangle of perfect darkness.

I’ve got him! Sensei, I’ve got him!

Go help the others, Naruto. I’ll stay with him.

But–

Now! Go!

Tenzō takes a deep breath and throws himself forward into the darkness.

His whole body aches. His eyes sting. His throat feels like he’s screamed it raw, but…

He’s alive. He’s awake.

“Yamato!”

Tenzō takes a huge breath and starts to cough.

It hurts. It all hurts so much .

There’s something encasing him, scratchy and suffocating. Someone is tearing it away from him in clumps, revealing first his face and then freeing his arms and then…

Whatever the substance is, it crumbles into dust and falls away to leave behind only a smell like garden mulch, damp leaves and dead plants.

“You’re alive.”

Tenzō forces his eyes open and sees Kakashi. His Kakashi. His hair is a birds nest, he looks haggard and dusty and bloodied, but it’s Kakashi.

Except…

“Your eyes,” Tenzō says.

It comes out as a broken whisper that Kakashi has to lean in closer to hear. He has both arms beneath Tenzō’s shoulders now, holding him off of the ground.

Kakashi looks down at him with two matching dark eyes that fill abruptly with tears that he rapidly blinks away. The Sharingan that he’s carried for half of his life is gone.

“Yeah,” Kakashi says. “It’s…a very long story.”

Tenzō swallows and it hurts (everything hurts). He has the sense that he’s woken up in a world that’s been broken, ruined, burned beyond recognition. He can hear, feel, smell the wasteland around him, but he cannot tear his eyes away from Kakashi’s face.

“Do you still…”

He has to cough again, his throat unbearably dry. He should wait. This whole conversation should wait. But every second that he’s awake in this reality, the other one fades a little more. The joy fades. The easy contentment fades. The love that he shared with Kakashi, that’s fading too.

He has to know if there’s any chance, even a tiny one, that he could be that happy in this world. That Kakashi could be so happy, too. That they could make each other happy.

Kakashi is still holding him up by the shoulders, his eyes smouldering with emotions that Tenzō can’t begin to understand because he hasn’t been there. He doesn’t know what Kakashi has been through in this war, doesn’t even know how long he’s been gone, how long the war lasted or how great was the cost. Neither does Kakashi know how it’s been for Tenzō, how it was to live an entire life with a dream of him, to spend years there in peace and love and belonging. How it was to have everything he’s ever wanted.

Is it possible for the two of them to ever relate to each other ever again? Or have they crossed a chasm that’s too wide and deep to bridge? Tenzō has to know and he has to know right now.

“Do I still?” Kakashi prompts, eyes furiously searching his.

Tenzō coughs again, weakly.

“Do you still think...we’re never gonna have a happy ending?”

Kakashi’s expression shifts so rapidly and so dramatically that it makes Tenzō’s heart ache to watch. He looks stricken, then remorseful, then grieved until finally settling on something wet-eyed and hopeful. He slides his right arm more securely beneath Tenzō’s shoulders and hauls him up to sitting.

“It’s been years,” he says.

Tenzō reaches out with a weak and trembling arm to tuck his fingers over the top of Kakashi’s mask. He sees Kakashi’s lips part in surprise behind the fabric and for a second he flinches back.

“Don’t.”

“I dreamed about you,” Tenzō whispers, giving in to his voice’s lack of strength.

Kakashi drops his head and lets out a shaky breath.

“So much has happened.”

“Can I see you?” Tenzō’s fingers twitch, tug a little at the mask. “Please?”

Kakashi’s eyes meet his, then Kakashi curls his left index finger over the top of his mask and tugs it down to his chin. His lips are dry and cracked; they’ve bled in places. His mouth is different from the way Tenzō remembers it, different from the dream.

“Do you still believe there’s no happy ending?”

“I don’t know,” Kakashi confesses. “But Yamato—”

“Tenzō.”

Kakashi blinks at him.

“You always call me Tenzō,” Tenzō says hoarsely, trying to smile.

Kakashi’s lips curve upwards into the most beautiful smile that Tenzō thinks he’s ever seen before he finally leans in and touches his mouth to Tenzō’s.

Tenzō kisses him with all the energy he can muster, which isn’t much. It’s chaste, but when Kakashi’s warm breath flutters against his face, it starts a real fire inside him.

It’s more than the dream ever was.

“Tenzō,” Kakashi murmurs against his cheek, stroking his hair.

“I don’t care,” Tenzō says, grabbing hold of Kakashi’s flak vest and holding on like if he doesn’t, Kakashi will disappear again. “I don’t care how it ends. I want you for right now. I...I need you.”

Kakashi hides his face in the crook of Tenzō’s neck and Tenzō feels him nodding. His nose is cold against Tenzō’s skin like it was in the dream. Like it was in ANBU. Like it’s always been.

“I’ve missed you,” Kakashi confesses, muffling that secret against Tenzō’s shoulder just like the last. “Not just now, but before, ever since we…”

His fingers seize in Tenzō’s shirt.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he says, shoulders shaking until Tenzō is the one trying to hold him together.

Kakashi almost did lose him, Tenzō realises. He hadn’t wanted to wake up. He hadn’t wanted to live in the world where Kakashi’s prophecy robbed them of a happy ending.

But this isn’t that world, or the dream world. It’s a new one.

Tenzō coaxes Kakashi’s head up to kiss him again, because he wants to and because he can.

It’s just like before. He pours his love into it and Kakashi responds in kind.

Even if Kakashi never says it, Tenzō knows .

He can’t predict how things will end but he has a chance. They have a chance.

Tenzō will take it.