"Kakashi-sensei, am I sexy?"

She can't be talking to him. She simply can't. Not with that sort of query. It's impossible in every way that she would ask him such a thing. Never mind that he's the only "Kakashi-sensei" in the vicinity and, for that matter, the only person in the vicinity she could be addressing. She simply can't be speaking to him.

"Don't ignore me!"

Kakashi desires to do just that, but he has no wish to go up against the temper of a nineteen-year-old capable of taking down a tree. There are risks and then there is Haruno Sakura.

"Ask Naruto."

"I need a fair, impartial opinion. You're the only guy I trust not to be biased."

Hurray for me, is Kakashi's sardonic thought.

"Fine. What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to tell me whether I'm sexy or not!"

"I can't really have an opinion on how sexy you are, can I? You'd have to be wearing something revealing. Like...lace underwear or something."

Sakura's visage turns an impressive shade of crimson.

"You...want me to wear lace underwear...?"

"Or something."

Sakura suspects that, in this case, "something" means "absolutely nothing".

"So if I leave and then come back in...my underwear...you'll tell me if I'm sexy or not?"

"Yes."

Kakashi doesn't expect her to comply with his wishes.

He expects, at the most, a slap across the face as she denounces him as a "filthy pervert".

Regardless of how determined she is for his "unbiased opinion", there is a limit to her tolerance.

But, to his amazement, she departs the living room and returns dressed in almost the exact way he proposed. However, lacking any lacy underwear in her wardrobe, she has been forced to don a normal pink bra and a pair of simple pink panties as an alternate. She fidgets slightly, blushing as she stands before Kakashi. Clearly she is immensely embarrassed to be in front of him practically naked.

"Okay, I did what you wanted. Am I sexy?"

Kakashi files away a little reminder for future events: "If Sakura invites you for lunch at her house, politely decline". He is perspiring more than he was a moment previous.

"I can't say you're exactly my cup of tea."

"What does that mean? Are you saying you wouldn't have sex with me? Are you saying I'm unattractive?"

The conversation is going in a direction Kakashi would rather it wouldn't, but he can't do anything about it at this point.

"Unattractive? Not really. Just...not exactly my cup of tea. You have a nice body, though. A lot of men would happily do you."

He cringes as the last utterance passes his lips. He is afraid that he has crossed an indistinct line of some sort and will be severely punished for it. Never mind that she's standing in front of him in nothing but skimpy underwear at the moment. He's certain she could find some reason to accuse him of being the pervert in the situation and then throttle him.

"Can you assess me properly when I'm wearing this?" Sakura wonders aloud, looking somewhat troubled. "If I wasn't wearing anything..."

To Kakashi's horror, her hands travel to the straps of her bra.

"What...what are you doing?!"

"Giving you the chance to make a real evaluation."

But Kakashi is apparently in no mood for a "real evaluation". Blushing profusely, he utters hastily,

"There's...there's no need for that! I promise!"

Much to his relief, she halts in the action of removing her bra before anything can be revealed.

"Thank you for lunch, but...," Kakashi begins, eager to leave.

Unfortunately for him, things are far from wrapping themselves up. Before he can complete his utterance, Sakura has seized his arm and is leading him from the room. The only reason he allows himself to be led is due to the fact that he's unusually flustered at the moment. His thoughts are having a hard time settling in his skull, preferring to flutter around irritably. Before he can object to anything, the two of them are in Sakura's bedroom. His nervousness escalating with every passing second, he takes a seat on the bed as instructed.

Sakura looks slightly shy at first, but she forces herself to regain confidence. Giving her companion a look that is uncomfortably akin to lust, she strides over to where he is seated on the bed. She leans close to him, her body almost, but not entirely, pressed against him. Propped up by her palms, she is now within kissing distance as Kakashi desperately presses his back against the right wall.

"Do you like this, Kakashi-sensei?" she inquires in a seductive whisper. "Are you getting turned on? Tell me what you're thinking."

He could easily tell her his thoughts, but most of them are too dirty to say out loud.

"That's okay," she responds to his silence, maintaining that enticing whisper. "I don't need to know what you're thinking to know what you want."

What the hell is going on? Kakashi wonders.

He attempts to make sense of the sequence of events that led him to this awkward position, but it insists on becoming tangled. As far as he can see, Sakura invited him over to her abode for lunch and he accepted chiefly because she appeared in such an unhappy state when she asked. Once there, things continued as they were expected to until she began explicitly asking him about her allure. He made a careless demand that he didn't expect her to follow that ended up expanding the situation. He allowed himself to be taken to her bedroom and now she is for some reason trying to seduce him. Kakashi is both aroused and deeply perplexed.

"I always thought you were attractive," Sakura continues. "Hard to keep my eyes on on whatever I was supposed to be doing when you were around. For a while, I wanted to...well, you can probably guess. You have no idea how strange I felt for thinking about you in that way. But it wouldn't stop and I didn't want it to."

"Oh...," Kakashi replies shortly, his heart pounding.

He wonders why he is being informed of this now. It's not that he would have expected her to confide in him years previous. It is merely that this seems the most random time for any of this to be happening.

Sakura runs her tongue across her lips.

"I can feel your desire. I know how much you want me. I know how excited you're getting. Am I correct?"

"Ye-Yes," Kakashi stammers tensely.

Abruptly, Sakura's seductive manner seems to melt away.

"Wow! I actually did it. And I made you really shy as well!"

The mood that had settled on the room shatters as she retreats, a pleased smile on her features.

"It's weird." Sakura crosses to her wardrobe. "You read those perverted books all the time, yet when it comes to ACTUAL sex you become really bashful."

She pulls open her wardrobe and begins going through the assembled outfits. At length, she selects her regular non-mission clothing which consists of a red blouse with a yellow top underneath it and a navy-tinted skirt. Humming casually, she slips on the top and the cerise blouse.

It takes Kakashi a minute to process what is going on

Meanwhile, Sakura completes her task by pulling on the skirt. She seizes a brush and runs it through her bright pink locks, humming pleasantly as she gazes at herself in the mirror.

"Wait a minute!" Kakashi utters sharply, coming to his senses. "What was the point of getting me all worked up if you were just going to leave it at that?!"

"Are you deaf? Obviously the point has to do with the question I asked earlier."

Vaguely, as if it occurred hours ago, Kakashi recalls her exact words:

"Kakashi-sensei, am I sexy?"

"So, that's all it was?" he queries, sighing in a rejected sort of way. "I should have suspected from the beginning."

Sakura eyes him steadily, feeling a little guilty. She could simply be imagining things, but she thinks he looks immensely disenchanted. She inquires, phrasing her utterance with care,

"You're not disappointed, are you?"

"Disappointed? What gives you that idea? There's nothing I love more than being extremely aroused and then told I won't be getting any."

His words are so laden with sarcasm one would have to be a complete idiot not to take notice of it.

Becoming sincere, he adjoins,

"You're not the kind of woman to have random sex. With you, it would have meant something."

"Would you have wanted it to mean something?" Sakura asks quietly.

She is not just asking for the sake of it. Now that she has finished, she has found fault with teasing the poor man. Additionally, she is annoyed with herself for inviting him to lunch with an ulterior motive in mind. She knows that he agreed to it to make her happy, rather than because he actually wanted to.

Kakashi looks her straight in the eye, his expression yet again unreadable. He speaks in a contemplative tone of voice.

"That's the thing. I'm not sure."

It's not a real answer. It's not at all satisfactory or intended to wrap anything up. Kakashi is merely speaking his mind, regardless of how baffling or inconclusive the contents are.

"I'm not sure either," Sakura admits reluctantly, aware of the fact for the first time.

And she isn't.

When she thinks about it, those things she said earlier have a bit of truth in them.

"I always thought you were attractive...It wouldn't stop and I didn't want it to."

And then his words a few minutes previous...

She knows Kakashi is right. She's not the kind of woman to have random sex. If she chooses to have sex with him, it will mean something.

She knows it will mean something.

He knows this as well.

But do they want it to mean something?

There's only one way to find out.