Characters: Kakashi, Shizune
Summary: Kakashi's idea of asking a woman out was, as with every other aspect of his life, not quite socially correct. KakaShiz.
Pairings: KakaShiz
Author's Note: Even though it's not remotely canon, if this ever did happen, I can see Kakashi asking out any woman like this.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

It was a beautiful summer's day outside, but neither one of them were going to get to enjoy it anyway. The light pouring from the large, tall windows and the sounds of people milling around outside almost seemed like a taunt to them both, reminding them that, unless the situation changed, neither one of them were going to get to go outside until long after dark.

Shizune's bangs were probably going to stick out at odd angles if she continued to press her hand up against her forehead, but Kakashi decided against pointing that out. While usually even-tempered, some things about Tsunade had rubbed off on her: Shizune didn't drink a lot, but when she did she tended towards binge drinking, she was more than a little controlling in the hospital and, most importantly, her temper, when properly ignited, was terrifyingly spectacular.

"What does it take for Hokage-sama to do the paperwork herself?" Kakashi finally growled, tempted to take the paper on top of the stack in front of him and ball it up and throw it out the window. The only reason he didn't was because, again, Shizune probably would have lost her temper, if only because she had too strong a sense of what was proper to do it herself.

The young medic smiled weakly, brown eyes a little tired but mostly exasperated with her mistress. "Nothing short of a miracle. Tsunade-sama's never been all that keen on fulfilling her obligations."

"I can see that."

They both knew how Tsunade spent her days, anyway.

She was drinking, and drinking hard. Said drinking had been getting better, but had gotten progressively worse after Jiraiya and Naruto left for their extended training mission.

Tsunade was also training Sakura, though Shizune had often complained, usually only to Kakashi, that she was training Ino but didn't use that as an excuse to skip out on work. Kakashi shrugged, nodded, and tried not to offer an opinion if he could help it. It was better, he knew, just to let women rant when they were angry. It may have been just a touch of jealousy on Shizune's part, too, that made her protest in this case. She was used to being overshadowed, but Kakashi could see why she might resent being almost completely pushed out of Tsunade's life by his former kunoichi student. Being a part of Tsunade's life was the only niche Shizune had ever known; without that, her sense of self-worth plummeted.

And, finally, she was waiting for Jiraiya and Naruto to come back. Truthfully, everyone who knew them and was close to them, Kakashi and Shizune especially, were waiting for them to come back, but Tsunade seemed intent on making a career out of it.

Shizune tapped her pen against her head, biting her lip and letting breath come out as a whistle between her teeth. Pale cheeks were flushed with frustrated color.

Kakashi shot a glance at Shizune before speaking.

"Ritsuko's, tonight at seven?" Ritsuko's was a new restaurant that had opened up a couple of months ago.

Immediately, her eyebrows shot up into coal-black bangs. "This is…out of the blue." And it was; they had hardly ever interacted outside of a work setting, unless one counted the handful of times they had met as children, and for Shizune, who was younger, those encounters were beginning to fly back into the realm of distant, fuzzy memory. Her lips twitched as she asked, with a forced clinical note, "Aren't you supposed to send flowers first?"

Equally clinical, he responded, "I'm fairly certain that flowers come afterwards, Shizune." He took a mental note concerning Shizune's expectations. A bird flew past the window, a light blue streak of feathers.

"It's still a bit…spontaneous." As an instinct, Kakashi supposed, Shizune was keeping her face carefully neutral, thin mouth pursed and smooth, pale skin bland, perhaps not to reveal any emotions and invite attack; shinobi's instincts did tend to bleed over into personal life. "Mind telling me what brought this on?"

Kakashi bit back a sigh, while reminding himself that Shizune was probably the only woman who, when asked out, would ask the man trying to take her to dinner why he was asking her out. "I don't see that I need a reason." More casually, he added, "Neither one of us are going to get much pleasure out of today." He eyed the menacing stacks of papers in front of them. "Especially not with all this paperwork. So I don't see why we shouldn't get some enjoyment out of the night."

Shizune didn't look at him as she continued to sign papers and read pink and yellow forms, hands dispassionate and precise. "That makes sense, I suppose." Suddenly, her voice was absent and blank just as her face had been a moment before; trying to keep emotions away from the surface. It couldn't have been easy, considering how easy emotions seemed to come to her, at least outwardly. Kakashi supposed that could just be an act.

"Well?" He pressed the point, insistent. "Do you want to go to Ritsuko's tonight?" The paperwork on his end had been all but forgotten, completely insignificant.

She still didn't look up, but eyebrows rose again. "At seven?"

"At seven."

The pen grasped in her fingers hit the desk, letting a small blot of ink drip on what was probably very important paperwork. Shizune turned brown eyes on him, tilting her head to an angle so soft strands of short black hair brushed the desk.

"Okay," she murmured, smiling shyly.