Beneath the Sun

Chapter 4

Tenzou doesn't know when it starts, except that it does.

He stops feeling like he's fully in the present when he realizes that he is making comparisons that he shouldn't be making at all.

It starts off small, the thought barely even registering one late afternoon, creeping in like an infection, when Kakashi is on his knees, a firm hold on Tenzou's hips, cock deep in Kakashi's throat.

Tenzou really notices Kakashi's hair, which is thick, coarse, drier around the edges. It doesn't feel like silk when Tenzou's fingers cards through them. The strands are not smooth in their flow when they fall between his fingers, completely uneven. Tenzou can't wrap Kakashi's hair around his fist — too short, too different — but he grips a fistful all the same, and fucks that needy mouth the way Kakashi wants him to. He fully understands now, the appeal of long hair, why most of his partners in the past, including Kakashi, had bunched up his long hair, wrapped it around a fist and fucked his mouth. Tenzou had done it to others who had long hair before, but never truly appreciated it until now.

Tenzou doesn't realize how he'd made the comparison while getting an amazing blowjob until much later, when they're both lying in bed with the setting sun spilling into the room, casting everything in a warm orange glow. Tenzou finds himself staring at Kakashi's profile, at the three day old stubble growing on his face — his sharper jaw, thicker neck, and how silver strands fall against the pillow but don't quite flow over it.

Tenzou thinks of another jaw, how it is softened by smooth, clean shaven skin, framed by silky strands around a beautiful face. Iruka has longer and thicker lashes than Kakashi, and his nose isn't as pointed, his lips aren't as thin; he doesn't have a scar cutting across the upper left corner of his lip, or a birthmark on his chin. Iruka's lips are incredibly soft, always framing teeth that peek out when he's amused, or being cheeky. The dimples that dot his cheeks are what makes Iruka look softer, less harsher, less dark and haunted by shadows that surround broken men like Kakashi, or someone like Tenzou, who isn't broken at all, because there is simply nothing in him to break.

Tenzou must have been staring for too long, because Kakashi cracks an eye open and turns to face him.

Tenzou can't deny that Kakashi is ridiculously attractive.

He isn't even sure why he's subconsciously making the comparison to begin with. It's unreasonable.

Kakashi pins him with a questioning look, a single eyebrow going up. Tenzou doesn't deem it with a response and simply turns his head away, his own thoughts spinning in his head.

But, the comparison never stops. Tenzou starts to notice everything — how Kakashi's hands are calloused, drier, his nails not as smooth or even as Iruka's; how Kakashi is broader, stronger, how his cock is longer in Tenzou's hand, heavier. Iruka's had been thick, a good girth, but it didn't take as long to stroke. He starts to look for things like pen marks on fingertips, a jagged scar that is smooth and warm on a right palm that's missing because Kakashi's scars are different — they tell a story of a lifetime of war, and sometimes, recklessness that stems from too much hurt over the years.

It happens again, and again, again, and Tenzou only stops when one day, months into their continuous fuckfest, when Kakashi had pinned him with a lopsided smirk as Tenzou stared at his profile, completely lost in his thoughts, amusement tugging around the corners of Kakashi's lips.

It's a sobering reaction, ice going down his neck, and Tenzou forces himself to be hyper aware, when he should be more relaxed behind closed doors and in Kakashi's company. After all, he trusts Kakashi with his life, and doesn't think there's anyone else in Konoha he can count on the way he counts on Kakashi.