In Another Life

You wake slowly, the way you might surface from deep water—half-dreaming, suspended, the air thick with warmth and silence. Pale morning light stretches in long fingers across the ceiling.

Warm.

Too warm.

You shift instinctively—groggy, disoriented—but something stops you. Something solid.

Heavy.

Steady.

Breathing.

Your breath catches.

No.

No, he’s breathing.

Your eyes snap open, throat dry.

The first thing you see is pale skin. The curve of a shoulder, the edge of silver hair trailing across his brow like winter frost, the faintest smear of old scarring at his jawline where the mask’s ridden down. He’s so close your breath bounces off the hollow of his throat and warms your own face.

Kakashi.

Pressed flush against you. One arm coiled tight around your waist, the other wedged beneath the pillow your head is sharing. His leg tangled over yours, like you’d started the night in two separate quadrants of the futon and gravity just—collapsed the distance.

He’s completely wrapped around you.

His entire body molded to yours like puzzle pieces jammed together in a rush. Like you’re the last solid thing he could hold on to. Like he doesn’t trust the world not to drag him somewhere else if he lets go.

And he’s asleep.

Soundly.

His face is softer in the morning light. Less shadow. Less tension. The ever-present furrow between his brows is still there, but faint, as if even his nightmares didn’t have the strength to cling to him last night. His mouth—what little of it is visible beneath the slack line of his mask—is relaxed.

Human. Vulnerable, even.

You don’t think you’ve ever seen him like this.

And worse: you don’t know how to feel about it.

There’s a strange silence in your chest. Not calm—more like held breath.

You should say something. Or move. Or scream, maybe. But your body betrays you, still and unsure beneath his.

You’re too aware of everything at once.

The weight of his thigh against yours, the coarse fabric of his uniform rumpled between you, the heat of his hand splayed low over your stomach—steady, protective. The press of your face angled into the crook of his neck where you must’ve curled in unconsciously sometime during the night.

He smells like sage smoke and steel and something warmer, like skin warmed by sun-dried sheets. Something you can’t name.

You try to move again—an experimental shift of your hip, a half-hearted nudge of your elbow—but his grip tightens unconsciously.

Instinct.

Muscle memory.

Like his body’s already decided not to let go, even if he’s still asleep.

“…Okay,” you mutter aloud, voice ragged from disuse. “New personal record for the world’s worst sleepover.”

Nothing.

He doesn’t even twitch.

Kami, he’s out cold.

Kakashi. The Hatake Kakashi. Captain of ANBU, notorious insomniac, who can snap to full alert at the drop of a senbon. A man who could pace for three nights straight with nothing but tea and paranoia.

And here he is.

Snoring.

Lightly.

Like someone who doesn’t know where he is—or worse, someone who does and decided it was safe enough to sleep anyway.

You glance at the window. It’s still early. You’re both still trapped in this borrowed world with no clear way home and no idea who might be hunting you.

And still, his arms are around you like they never weren’t.

Your chest tightens.

Because the weirdest part isn’t the sleeping.

It’s the chakra. His charka. 

You can feel it. Still pressed against yours. Still entangled. As though it never withdrew. Still humming faintly beneath the surface of your skin like a ghost echo.

You thought it would fade by now. You thought what he gave you in the forest—what he forced into you, when your body wouldn’t hold itself together—was a last-ditch fix. A field patch. A life-saving burn.

But it’s not gone.

It’s not a patch.

It feels like a seam.

Like something stitched together.

Like if you move too fast, you might rip it open.

Your throat works around nothing.

It’s just a field thing, you remind yourself. You’ve shared worse. Slept in tighter quarters, closer formations. Back to back, shoulder to shoulder, drenched in blood and sweat and chakra burn. It’s not new.

This isn’t new.

And still, the beat of your heart stumbles like it missed a step.

You tell yourself it’s just the position. The heat. The strangeness of it.

But you know the difference between adrenaline and… whatever this is.

You exhale slowly, willing your body to loosen beneath him.

It doesn’t.

Because part of you is afraid—if you relax too much, you’ll start leaning in.

Then—

He shifts.

Just slightly.

You freeze, instantly alert, watching his face like a civilian caught in a genjutsu trap.

His nose scrunches faintly. Eyelashes flutter. His hand flexes slightly on your stomach like he’s dreaming.

And you are still very much pinned beneath him.

Trapped under muscle and heat and instinct and something else. Something you can’t name.

Please don't wake up. Please don't wake up. 

You don’t speak.

You don’t dare.

Because if you do—

He might wake up and see you.

And you don’t know what would be worse.

That he pulls away—

Or that he doesn’t.

The first thing he registers is the warmth.

The second is the weight—his own, anchored around something smaller, softer, steady.

And then—your chakra.

It brushes against his like a hand on a pulse point. Humming. Familiar. Faintly resonant.

It drags him back to consciousness more gently than any alarm, more cleanly than any threat. A slow, full-bodied return to awareness that’s rare. Unsettling, almost.

He blinks, half-groggy, half-alert.

He never sleeps like this.

Not anymore. Not unless sedated. Not unless everything inside him stops fighting long enough to trick him into thinking he’s safe.

And yet—he slept.

Worse—he slept on you.

He doesn’t move at first. Doesn’t even breathe for a full second, because suddenly everything is too much.

The curve of your body against his. The way his leg is hooked over yours, thigh resting heavy. The rise and fall of your breathing beneath his palm, curled against your stomach like he put it there on instinct. The way his chin is near your temple, close enough to catch the way your hair smells—smoke, soap, maybe something floral he refuses to name.

The faint static of your chakra—his chakra—still laced into yours like a current that never stopped flowing.

He should pull away.

He knows that.

But some part of him—something deep, something animal and aching—doesn’t.

The world feels quieter here, in this tangle. Like nothing exists outside this room. Like this is the only place left where you’re both still whole.

His grip tightens reflexively, just a fraction. His fingers curl in.

She could’ve vanished, something in his mind mutters. Again. You were lucky. This time, you were lucky.

That should’ve kept him awake all night. Should’ve been enough to string his nerves taut and wired.

Instead—

Your chakra had lulled him.

Not intentionally. But something about it—woven now with his, drawn together by that night he thought he’d lose you—sedated him. Anchored him. Like your body had become familiar ground. Like being next to you was the only way he didn’t float off the edge.

It shouldn’t have happened.

But it did.

And now you’re awake.

He feels it before you even speak—your chakra rippling with alertness, your body gone stiff against him.

Still, you don’t shove him off.

You just lie there. Breathing. Warm and solid in his arms.

Waiting.

“…Sorry,” he mutters finally, voice low, rough.

You don’t answer right away.

Then: “Didn’t know you snored.”

His lips twitch beneath the mask. He lets out something that might be a laugh—or the ghost of one.

“I don’t.”

“Mm. Could’ve fooled me. You were out cold. Thought I’d have to check your pulse.”

He lifts his head just enough to glance down at you.

Your face is dry, unreadable. That same practiced stillness you wear in briefings and battle. But your eyes are avoiding his. That’s fine. He’s not ready to look at you directly either.

“I said I’d keep watch,” he offers, voice dipping quieter, edged with something harder to name. “Didn’t expect to fall asleep.”

“I noticed.”

You shift slightly, not enough to escape—just to put a little space between your limbs and his. His arm slides reluctantly from your waist, his hand brushing over the slope of your ribs before settling in the space between you like it doesn’t know where else to go.

“…Your chakra stabilized,” he says after a beat.

That makes you look at him.

“I think being this close helped,” he continues, trying to keep the words clinical. Precise. “It’s… it’s tied to mine.”

You arch a brow. “So, what—now I’m a battery?”

He lets the corner of his mouth twitch upward. “A leaky one.”

You roll your eyes with a dramatic sigh and stare up at the ceiling. “Great. Just what I always wanted. A sleep aid with a superiority complex.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he mutters.

But he doesn’t roll away entirely.

Only shifts far enough that you’re no longer tangled together, but still near. Still close enough that his knuckles brush yours in the narrow space between you. He doesn’t move his hand.

Neither do you.

He doesn’t say it out loud, but it clings to every breath he takes. Every word he doesn’t speak.

He’s not letting you out of his sight again.

Not like that. Not when you were unraveling, bleeding your mind out into the trees. Not when you could’ve slipped away without a sound and never come back.

If that means awkward mornings, shared futons, rationalizing proximity as chakra maintenance—so be it.

You don’t have to ask.

He’s not going anywhere.

And as the silence stretches, filled only with the quiet hum of chakra and the distant sounds of morning—he doesn’t think you are, either.