#i havent had inspiration so if this story seems uninspired and shitty thats why

[sup-hoes-its-me]

Falling (Kakashi x Reader)

Summary: Reader has been friends with Kakashi for as long as she can remember, but recently, she has been developing more intense feelings for him. Hanahaki au, reader inflicted.

A/N: sorry ive been gone for so long. Life has been kicking my ass, but im trying to get back on my feet. I will try to post more often, but i cant make any promises. I can only write when im listening to extremely sad music, so if you have any gut wrenching, cry-your-eyes-out recommendations, leave a comment please!

Word count: 4500

_______

It was widely accepted as time went on that Y/N and her entire team died. They left six months ago and hadn't sent word back since week two. The mission wasn’t supposed to last any longer than three weeks, and constant relaying of information was supposed to take place. Only, communications had been cut off without warning, summons weren’t coming back home to report on the situation at hand, and not a single member had been seen since they left.

It was as if they'd fallen off the face of the Earth. The Hokage was beginning to plan a memorial service to honor them and their sacrifice to the village, after concluding that the shinobi were most likely dead. They couldn’t afford to throw even more money into the search when time kept passing and nothing was coming of it. Any remnants of hope Tsunade had was gone.

The rescue missions they did conduct had more than disappointing results. Trails of blood outside the city where the missing persons were assigned espionage. Abandoned bags with all their resources left behind. Scuffled footprints left in the deep set mud. Seeing all the evidence made it nearly impossible to remain positive.

Four shinobi left for that mission. One of them, the leader, just so happened to be Y/N L/N. Talented jounin and even more so, a beloved friend.

It was difficult for those close to her to accept her demise. It took all of those six months for people to come to terms with the horrific conclusion. Kakashi, despite normally tackling death smoothly due to their line of work, couldn't accept that she was dead. Not without a body. Not without some kind of proof. She was strong. Stronger than the majority of people he knew. There was no way she just succumbed to the enemy like that.

Really though, he just couldn’t admit that another person he had grown comfortable with was dead. Just like all the others that had come before her, bloodied and murdered. It depressed him, and as much as he tried to contain his emotions, those that interacted with him noticed. As much as Gai could try to cheer him up with pointless challenges, no matter how many times Yamato took him out to get absolutely hammered at the bar, or how many missions Tsunade sent him on to subvert his attention. The pain persisted.

He had other things to worry about as well. With the upcoming war, Jiraiya’s death, and the Akatsuki fucking everything up, he should have been on top of his game. Instead, he stayed up long nights willing her to come back alive. He replayed the moment Tsunade suggested they hold a memorial. Shizune sobbing upon the loss of her childhood friend. Gai hanging his head, palms pressed to his eyes. As he lay in his bed, he could feel the way his heart ached at each mention of her name, each time her face flashed through his mind.

Kakashi was heartbroken. He fought for the dates to be pushed back. Each week that passed, he begged that they have more time, that she would be back. It was pathetically sad, he knew this. He could feel the pity from Tsunade run off in waves. He wasn’t ready to mourn her death. All the man wanted was more time.

And then one day a few little academy students found a squad of nearly unrecognizable injured and bloodied people in the forest, trekking the best they could toward the village. They didn't know who the strangers were, why would they? They were just school kids, barely 10 years old. A bunch of old jounin having gone missing months ago wasn’t something they concerned themselves with.

Kakashi heard whispers about it from shinobi rushing to the Hokage’s office, but no one was saying anything concrete. No one could confirm it was them. Not yet.

A crew of Anbu was sent out to retrieve the stragglers, everyone hoping deep in their hearts that they’d be met with familiar faces.

He waited for her for nearly an hour, rain pouring down heavily and soaking into his clothes and hair, sending shivers down his spine. Perhaps he would end up with a cold the next day, he didn't care. When he thought about her, as he stood out there in the inclement weather, his lips curled up. If she were here, she'd have scolded him for being so ridiculous.

She’d usher him into the nearest shop and rub up and down his arms, trying to warm them with the little heat she had coming from her palms. The woman would hush him as he tried to defend himself, telling him not to worry so much and that she could handle herself. That’s always how she was, so worried about him yet uncaring about herself. Some would call her selfless, he would just call her stupid.

But he still cared for her. More than he realized.

That’s why he waited.

When they entered the village, being carried by multiple other shinobi from the village, blood seeping into their clothes and dripping into the sand below their feet, Kakashi felt his heart stop. He saw her teammates limping along with their arms over another’s shoulders. That, or they were being carried, incapacitated in the arms of a fellow soldier.

She was at the end of the line behind all the others who pulled themselves through the gates of their hometown. She was beaten to a pulp, blood drenched and purple from bruises. Her head was wrapped in makeshift bandages and her legs wobbled beneath her. He could see her arm broken, hanging limply at her side. A member of the Anbu carried her against his side as she struggled to even take each step.

Her eyes lifted from the ground to those who stood waiting for their arrival. Immediately, hers caught hold of the man who’d been waiting all this time.

"Kakashi?" she called out, weakly but still her voice found him through the chorus of moans and groans from her teammates and the downpour of the rain around them. Thunder crackled in the background as his feet hit the ground and he rushed across the street to her.

"L/N, you son of a bitch," he said, grabbing her by the waist without a second thought and tugging her body tightly to his chest, away from the hands of the Anbu soldier. She gasped, feeling his heart beating against her chest at the touch, fast and intense like a drum. Frostbitten fingers held her up by her waist while the other hand wound its way into her slick wet hair.

"Your hands. They-they're so cold. Kakashi, you shouldn't be out here like this!" she cried with the energy she had left in her chest. At the mere touch of his hands on her bare skin, she felt excitement fuel her mind. Thoughts rushed as her skin grew warm under his horrified gaze. These feelings, the warm and bubbly ones growing in her chest, were new, but she welcomed them without question after everything she had been through.

There was something else about him waiting out there, his frantic eyes, clothes soaking down to his bone with that icy cold water, that disturbed something deep inside her chest, burrowed down against her heart and rapidly inflating lungs. She brushed off the feeling, putting it down as simple relief from serious homesickness. There was no way to anticipate what had become of her feelings at that point, how they would ravage her body in a few years time, what had started to grow.

"Me? What about you? Everyone thought you died."

She peered up into his eyes, water dripping down from his shaggy bangs on display without his headband. Those irises were dark as always, but at the sight of her alive, they shined. "We were kidnapped. Tortured...Kakashi," she confessed, "Even I thought we were going to die."

“I could have protected you.” His hands found their way to cradling her cheeks, running his fingers along the raw and red skin that had been weathered all these months. Her face was littered with little cuts, both open and some that were in the process of healing into scars. “I should have come to find you-”

“It’s not your fault. You had other missions to take care of. No one could have predicted this.” The woman sighed audibly and let her head fall to rest in his hand. Why did this touch feel so good? It was like heaven on Earth, she thought as he ran his thumbs along her cheekbones. So comforting she wanted to curl up and fall asleep.

“We knew it was dangerous. Too dangerous, even for a four man squad.”

As she was about to protest, arguing that if she had been a better squad leader when approaching the enemy they could have avoided all this trouble, a voice called out from the gates. Sakura, of all people, standing there with a makeshift umbrella over her head made of a manilla folder.

“Kakashi-sensei, Y/N needs to get to the hospital now! No time to stand around!” she called through the heavy downpour, and he nodded. It probably wasn’t good for Y/N to be limping around on her broken up body any longer than she had to, and standing in this weather certainly wouldn’t help any. “I’ll meet you there. We already got a bed set up.”

Y/N clutched onto Kakashi’s arm and made a move to take a tentative, painful step forward, only to be stopped. “Let’s go,” she urged, peering up at him.

“Let me carry you.”

“Uh, what?”

“It’s a long way across town, you know. Aren’t you in pain?”

She nodded, but still, she felt herself dying a little bit on the inside at the thought of walking past all the people in town being cradled in his arms. People might get the wrong idea. “Yeah, I guess. It’s just embarrassing,” she mumbled. But really, her legs were killing her, and she would rather just relax until she got to the hospital than be in more excruciating pain. “Fine...You can, but don’t make it weird.”

“No one’s making it weird. I’m just being friendly.”

Friendly, my ass. More like flirty, she thought to herself. Whatever. Kakashi was still a pervert after all..

He lifted her slowly into his arms as she groaned at the pressure shifting. She let her head fall heavy against his chest and shut her eyes, taking deep breaths to work through the pain running through her body. She was safe now. All the anxiety and fear she’d held for so many months could flow away now that she was in the arms of a friend and in the care of a village which loved her.

As he walked across town, she felt nearly lulled to sleep by his pace and the gentle footsteps he took across dirt roads. Most people were inside at this time, but she did hear a couple shouts from people standing under their carts and in their storefronts, asking if everything was okay.

“Y/N’s back home,” he would reply shortly and they would cry back with relief in their voice. She felt pride in her chest knowing that the people of the town knew and respected her, that they were hoping for her safe return. Even if she wasn’t the best shinobi, she still was worth something to this village.

They got to the hospital in a pretty timely manner, considering he was extra careful not to jostle her around too much. He went to drop her off in her bed as the ward nurses rushed around with all kinds of equipment.

He was content, running his hand once more over her hair and down her cheek. No one could really tell how he felt from his masked lips, a smile only present in the way his eyes sparkled down at her lying in the thin white sheets. It flustered her, seeing how happy he was solely because of her. Surely, she wasn’t that special. “Kakashi?” she asked, interrupting the thick silence.

“I have to go, but I’ll take you out for drinks after you’re all fixed up, alright?” he told her, giving her shoulder one final squeeze as he backed away from the bed.

“I’ll hold you to that offer, you know,” Y/N called behind him as he walked toward the door. She didn’t want him to go. She wanted to keep talking, just enough conversation to keep him by her side for a little longer. Unfortunately, the hustle and bustle of the hospital room made that impossible, not to mention she would be stripped and examined, and she’d prefer if he wasn’t around for that part.

“I know.”

She leaned back in the bed as the door swung shut behind him. Once the door was shut, scissors began their work to cut away at the fishnets on her arms and her legs.

“You’re so lucky, Miss Y/N,” one of the nurses, who was beginning to examine some of the wounds on her face muttered giddily. Y/N raised a brow, shocked that someone could say that to her after she had literally been missing for months and held hostage, but still, she let the younger nurse continue. “We all wish we had a hot guy friend like Kakashi.”

“What?!” Y/N choked.

“She’s right. Kakashi is the sexiest man in town and he’s all over you! He acts all tough with everyone else but is a total sweetheart for you!” Another one of the nurses laughed. Y/N felt her face beginning to get hot, and she shook her head. “You should save some for the rest of us, haha.”

“Kakashi is not sexy...He’s a bumbling idiot, is what he is. An absolute scoundrel. A-A pervert.”

The nurse pressed a gauze to a particularly deep gash on the side of her temple, right on the hairline and shook her head. “Maybe he is those things, but damn, have you seen his arms? So strong. You could really see his muscles with his clothes soaked by the rain.” The nurse shook as if a shiver ran down her spine at the thought of the man.

Y/N really hadn’t ever looked at her friend like that. They were simply that...Friends. He was never sexy, or hot, or handsome. He was a stupid loser who cried over porn novel plots when he got a little too drunk. He was a smelly guy who slept with his ninkin because he was single, and only had like two friends.

“I’ve never seen him that way before,” she confessed quietly. Her mind was wandering to thoughts of his body, and she sighed, shaking her head. This was wrong. She couldn’t objectify him that way. He was just Kakashi, nothing special, nothing to gush about.

“I’m surprised. Always thought he liked you.”

“Me? God, no.”

“Well, why not? He cares about you enough,” one nurse commented offhandedly. “The village had given up on you four shinobi, but Kakashi, he never lost faith that you would come back. He was the sole reason your memorial was pushed back for so long.”

“Oh.” She didn’t expect that.

“How dreamy...All my lousy boyfriend does is complain about my cooking.”

The nurses continued to talk, but the conversation had now drifted off to griping about their own boyfriends and husbands which Y/N couldn’t care less about. Her mind wandered to the man who’d been so kind as to wait for her in the rain and carry her all the way here. He wasn’t ugly, she could see that much. Did that mean he was handsome? Well, she’d never thought about it before, but now that she did, they were right.

He was better looking than the majority of the men she’d encountered in her life. He was manly and intense, even with the mask on to conceal half his features. Still, recognizing that her friend was attractive did not mean that she had any sort of attraction toward him as a person.

There was no way she could develop feelings for such a fool. That quiver in her heart when she saw him waiting for her at the gates? That was just a fluke. And the nauseous feeling she got when his hands touched her skin? Nothing but human nature. Her desperately wanting him to stay with her in this hospital room, after being away from him for far too long? She was just home sick, and he was a small portion of the place she called home. These ladies were delusional if they thought she felt anything more than friendship for him.

Kakashi? As a boyfriend?

Gross. Of course not. Completely out of the question.

_______

Over the course of the war, and the years following, Y/N had grown a little too familiar with Kakashi Hatake, more so than ever before. It was as if those nurses years ago foretold her future.

She loved him. She knew that now.

He was a friend, one of the greatest to ever exist, despite his denial of it all. They fought alongside each other in multiple wars, conquering enemies while protecting the other. It was a partnership she was more than happy to have, ecstatic someone was there to have her back when things were looking grim. He, Shizune, and even Gai and Genma had been there for so long she couldn’t remember a life without them.

Kakashi was different though. As she watched him rise from a jounin into the Hokage they knew, she felt her heart begin to flutter when he called for her, or when he took the time out of his day to come by her house. He was all too important, and she was merely an ant under his feet. She longed for his touches and his ever-so tired words to fall from his lips. He was so unobtainable, and perhaps that made her want him even more.

After she arrived home from her disaster of a mission, things truly began to fall apart. She couldn’t keep her composure anymore. She was only anxious in the beginning. How could she not be? She harbored a love for her best friend and Hokage, someone so far out of her league she couldn’t even fathom admitting her feelings to him now. She wasn’t a child anymore; they were adults with responsibilities. They didn’t have time to fool around with these antics.

He didn’t have time to settle down with her, or whatever a love between them would blossom into. They barely had time to go out and get drinks every couple of weeks for a few hours. How could they date? It was completely hopeless. Not that any of those problems mattered considering the fact that he didn’t harbor the same feelings she had for him. It was embarrassing really. Having a crush at the ripe age of 32? Unreciprocated? So stupid. Y/N wanted to bury her head in the sand for being so foolish.

She was so busy wallowing in her own shame and pity that she hadn’t even noticed the signs.

Almost as quickly as she felt the emotions brew up in her chest and her love grow firm, they started.

The coughing fits.

It only felt like a small cold at first. Coughing in the middle of the night and needing to drink some water to get back to bed. Maybe it was just allergies, she thought, after weeks had passed and the sickness remained. Maybe she had caught a virus from another nation and the antidote was something foreign. Surely that must be it, she thought after a month.

Desperately, the woman tried to ignore the nagging feeling deep in her chest, pooling in her stomach. This sickness felt sinister, forcefully aggressive in the most intimate sort of way. She couldn't shake the feeling that something was grappling at her ribcage, digging it's way to her lungs and her heart. Burrowing inside. She held her head high and ignored it.

She was a kunoichi. After years and years of fighting, her body had been through worse more times than she could count. Y/N could handle it. That’s what she assumed, anyway.

She was mid-training session, deep in the woods where she focused on developing new jutsu when it was finally revealed to her just what was wrong. Quiet wind blew past her face and whipped at her cheeks. With this cold, she knew it wasn't wise to be out in winter, only putting further strain on her lungs which struggled to take in air. Still, she needed to train, to work; it was the only thing that kept her head afloat.

Kakashi was so busy. It seemed like recently she only ever saw Kurenai and Gai. Being Hokage was never a position he wanted, but he fulfilled the role well. She wished to spend more time with him. To see his face and to hear him chuckle from beneath his mask. Everyday, she felt herself growing more desperate for him. Yet, she kept herself from acting a fool.

She didn't burden him with the knowledge of her growing illness. He didn't need any more stress on his mind; he was busy worrying over an entire nation after all. It broke her heart being so distant, to not sit down and share her secrets and concerns with him like before.

She felt her stomach turn, sick at the thought of missing him, the man of her affections.

That single moment, with the turn of an upset stomach and the clench of her longing heart in her chest, is when it started.An awful heavy feeling sinking deep into her abdomen and clouding her mind of every coherent thought. She choked on the frigid air whipping by her face as it clashed with the fire lit ablaze.

The woman fell to the ground, knees digging into the soft dirt. Her lungs were like lead forcing her to the ground while a powerful burn ran through them up into her throat. Coughs wrecked her body which curled in on itself as the fit grew more intense. Fingers desperately clutched at the fabric above her heart and the necklace around her throat.

The pain was something unlike anything she knew. It burned deeper than she thought a simple cough or cold could. Tears grew in her eyes as she struggled to breath through the coughs full of rage and anger.

After a minute of hacking up what she assumed was her entire lung, something foreign left her mouth. The coughing subsided and she gasped for air, shutting her eyes and relishing in the relief. Only, that feeling was short lived as her eyes opened to peer down at what she’d choked up only a moment ago.

Some sort of flower petals littered the ground at her knees. She stared in disbelief. It was merely a legend among the old, rumors and tall tales passed along from generation to generation. It wasn’t something anyone ever took seriously. After all, it had been seemingly hundreds of years since a victim fell ill in the Leaf Village. There wasn’t a single person alive that had seen it first hand.

At first, she thought she might be hallucinating.

But as she reached down to thumb the petals, slick with her saliva, everything became eerily real. A heavy feeling fell on her chest and her breaths quickened, dread hanging over her head. This sickness she was having, it wasn’t caused by some reversible virus, one that could be fixed with an antidote. She was cursed. Ill beyond normal repair.

Hanahaki disease.

Caused by unrequited love.

She was so naive to think that letting herself develop these feelings for Kakashi would remain a harmless secret for as long as it lasted. Of course, it was just her luck that something like this would happen. Right after fighting a war, it seemed she would be fighting her own as well.

For now, she would keep it to herself, see how it progressed. From what she remembered of her grandmother talking about the disease, there were only two ways to cure it. Professing your love to the object of your affection and them reciprocating or a more tortuous route: surgery to remove the growing flora in your chest, but at the cost of forgetting every feeling and memory associated with your person. If no decision is made, the branches will continue to grow until you die a painful death.

If her ancestor was right all those years ago, Y/N would have quite the choice to make.

She wasn't sure she could forget about Kakashi. The memories she had with him brought her more joy than anyone could imagine. She couldn't give that up. She loved him. He was a critical part of her and she wasn't willing to break herself up into pieces just to be cured.

She would rather die than give up on him. She was fine with dying as just friends, knowing him and the things he'd done for her over the years. Anything but losing him forever.

Confessing would be hard, if not impossible. She would wait to make her choice, wait for it to get worse. If she got scared enough, surely she would crumble and confess her feelings to him. It all felt pointless though. He clearly did not have feelings for her. He was never the type to have lovey emotions. He would just reject her, her condition would become critical, and she would be forced to get the surgery anyway.

Maybe if he rejected her, it would be easier letting go of her precious memories

Fear crept under her skin and made room in her heart. What if he didn't mind losing her forever? They wouldn't have the time to mend their friendship back into one they had developed over so many years. He might just move on and forget about her, as much as she hated to think about. He seemed to care about her, even if they were only coworkers and coincidentally friends. Surely he would at least be a bit upset.

Honestly, there was no way to tell how Kakashi would react to the news of her losing all connection to him. He was elusive even in the most revealing of moments. Only a few times had he truly revealed his raw emotions to her. Sure, she liked to believe he would be upset, but if she was still alive and healthy, would he really complain? The morning's breakfast rose in her throat as self-doubt clouded her vision.

Y/N swallowed down her struggles for now. She had to live in the present, and as of right now she was still friends with Kakashi, she was healthy enough to live her life, everything was going fine.

Nothing to worry about.