Dolce Far Niente

Domesticity

"You wouldn't believe what the kids did during this mission, my love."

Kakashi sauntered through the door, lazily throwing his things about onto the floor of our shared apartment. He had been gone for several days on a mission with his team of genin. Despite his aloof attitude and earlier hesitance towards the three preteens, he had grown quite fond of the trio.

Kakashi had grabbed my hand as he knelt besides my sprawled body as I occupied the entirety of our couch. His hands grabbed mine and his head rested upon my bare thigh, slowly guiding my hand to caress the side of his face. His revealed eye closing as he let out a sigh of relief, my fingers unconsciously drawing patterns upon the curvatures of his jaw and cheeks and nose—my perfectly sculpted warrior.

"Welcome home, my dear," I replied as my body shifted slightly in order to better support his neck. My other hand finding its way to the silver tresses that always seemed to defy gravity; unruly, yet perfect. Despite his ninken, the copycat ninja often acted as such when in the relaxed confines of our home: a cat. With his eye still closed, he ushered his head into my hand as my fingers combed through in an inconsistent pattern. Sometimes I scratched his scalp, sometimes I'd twist the ends into a point; my hand in his hair had a mind of its own.

"What did the three do this time?" My sleepy, hoarse voice cracking halfway through the question.

Without opening his eye, he responded, "they kept trying to see me without my mask." I cracked a smile while still indulging in the sweetness of his face. His relaxed demeanor. His utter vulnerability.

"Like what?" I said through relaxed lips and a genuine smile. "Come up here," my body shifted in order to accommodate his body on the couch.

Kakashi's eye fluttered open as our bodies melded together in an unspoken language that both of us had grown all too accustomed to. His head now on my chest and an arm wrapped under my torso while the other drifted lazily along my hips. And my midriff. And my thighs. His fingers writing the letters of the names of his students. "Well they kept inviting me out to lunch."

"Mhmm?"

"And they kept stalking me around the city."

"Mmm."

"At one point they dressed up as rogue ninjas and tried to threaten me into taking my mask off, all while the actual rogue ninja exposed themselves in an attempt to like," he paused inquisitively, trying to find his next words. "I think enact revenge?" His head perked up while he said the last word of his question, simultaneously making eye contact with me.

I used this moment to remove his headband and cup his face. Once removed, he laid back down with a huff, "yeah I'm not too sure what was all going on, to be honest." The headband was discarded somewhere along our already littered floor, the contents to be dealt with sometime soon, but just not now.

A slight chuckle left my chest as I allowed my own eyes to close. The weight of my lover served as an anxiety remedy—almost like a weighted blanket—and these simple moments of domesticity were my definition of "heaven on earth."

I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

"Kids are the best," I said, barely audible, as my head lulled to the side.

"Those ones are just," Kakashi lazily sighed, "they're just something else entirely." His free hand slipping his mask down, then returning to rubbing circles along my skin.

"I love you," I said, my words lingering heavily in the air, engulfing Kakashi in a metaphorical cocoon of unconditional adoration.

"I love you, too," his words going through my ears and wrapping my soul in an embrace only he was capable of.

"Yeah?" My lips curled into a soft smile.

"Yeah."

I'm not sure when I eased into sleep, but when I awoke, he was still there: in my arms and in our home.

It's these moments of sweet, simple, domesticity, that make me often forget about the dangers of both of our careers, but it's also moments like these that make me grateful for his returns.