Because the first bit wasn't nearly enough, but that was all it wanted to give me at the time. This, then, is the rest.
Dedicated to yellowis4happy, both here and on deviantART.
The first night they shared a hammock was a necessity for safety. Sakura was in hysterics, which everyone in the group thought to be perfectly rational considering only a day ago the girl had stumbled upon the murdered forms of the Godaime Hokage and the Hokage's first assistant Shizune. Because of her hysterics only Kakashi had been able to get her in control, and it was only with a reluctantly delivered nap-tap did he have the time to get someone to help him set up a hammock. He was the one who decided that Sakura was in no condition to sleep without supervision, and he held his former student to himself carefully as he sat into the hanging bed. When she awoke she cried silently into his jacket for most of the night.
There was nothing sensual about it.
The second time they shared a hammock was when Sakura gave up her own so that Temari, visiting the camp secretly to give them news from Gaara, could sleep unmolested by a certain shadow-master. She had caught Kakashi as he was getting back from a spar with a faceless Jounin who he knew but she did not. He was sure to be the only male in the entire group who wouldn't be completely repulsed by the thought of sharing a hammock on one of the hot, humid Fire Country summer nights. He didn't disappoint her. They talked for half the night, in mission-level whispers so as not to wake their fellow shinobi. At the false dawn, when the sky inexplicably became light before the temperatures plunged, they drifted off to sleep.
There was…something a little sensual about it. They had, after all, spent the night in conspiratorial closeness, breathing one another's breath, being swaddled close to one another by the hammock.
The third time they shared a hammock was six months later when they had completed a successful raid, a huge raid, of a poorly inventoried warehouse. Danzou was much more concerned with military stockpiles, and he unfortunately paid little attention to pre-military items. He looked for uniforms, not for cloth. He looked for shuriken and kunai, not kitchen knives or civilian weapons. He looked for things a shinobi could pick up and use as they had been trained—not for things a shinobi on the run might use once the shinies ran out. He also had lost the number-pushers of the village, the Yamanaka, the Aburame, the Nara, and most importantly the Sarutobi. No one who was left in Konoha had the patience or the patriotism to number-crunch, to form lists, to review those lists, or anything.
There had been dancing in the encampment when those on the mission had returned. Precious sake, the last gift of the Godaime many said, was poured out. The blood of many of them was warmed, and dancing broke out, swarming up into even the trees. Kakashi and Sakura had taken a bottle, having led the mission, and climbed one of the higher trees to sit and drink. His mask was down, her gloves were off, the moon was out, and they had sake to share. Each of them reminisced until the sake was gone. They were each a little wobbly a little later as they hopped down toward the earth, but they were steadied by one another, connected by clasped hands. Very few of their comrades were sober enough to catch the soft kiss the Copy Nin pressed to the pink haired teen's mouth. Even fewer of those would ever admit it after seeing her completely deck the group's Rokudaime, Naruto, the next morning for asking why the two of them had slept together. His wording had been, to be entirely truthful, poor: he had only asked why they shared a sleeping space, not even thinking of the usual connotations.
That had been the best night of Sakura's recently tragic life. She wasn't dysfunctional as a woman, she had found a man attracted by her strength, by her personality. And he had held her in his arms with affection, telling her that what he felt wasn't the sake but rather a feeling he had struggled with for months. They spent half the night stealing innocent kisses from one another between sentences.
It would remain, for the rest of her life, the most sensual experience she could think of.
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