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sasukeandsakuralover · 2 years ago

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Approaching Sun (33)

Author’s Note: Hello everyone! All this SasuSaku content we’ve been blessed with over the last couple of months had my heart hungry for more, so I got to typing! As always, sorry for the delay, but I hope this chapter is worth the wait. To all my readers who have been with me from the beginning, do not lose hope for me! And new readers, welcome to a world of waiting on me to get my crap together. Thanks again for the support!

Pairing: SasuSaku

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32

Chapter 33: Interrogations

Watching her friends exit through the doorway of the Kazekage’s office, Sakura couldn’t help but feel relieved as the rest of Team 7 and Shikamaru trailed behind Sasuke and Kankuro to the Sand Village Prison. Sakura’s cheeks were still a little red, taken by surprise at Sasuke’s unexpected appearance just now. Sakura mentally berated herself for the flushed reaction, especially after rehearsing in her head all morning how she would come off much more composed during their reunion after the whole kissing thing last night. She had matured a lot from her Genin days, and was usually very collected around her peers now (except Naruto, maybe, who sometimes brough out her temper), but seeing Sasuke assessing her own reaction with a certain white-haired sensei’s watchful, knowing eye had Sakura acting like her schoolgirl self again. She cringed at her own embarrassed behavior.

Suddenly, the Kazekage’s voice brought her back to the matter at hand. “Even though it is not ideal, there’s some logic behind Shikamaru’s suggestion.”

Sakura nodded, remembering her friend’s proposition regarding the anti-peace group targeting Sakura for her mental health-centered endeavors. Shikamaru had offered a solution to their dilemma on finding the rest of the group’s members, but it involved using Sakura as a lure for her enemies. It’s not that Sakura was opposed to the idea; she wasn’t worried in the slightest, actually. She was just annoyed with the problem at hand. She was making progress here in the Sand with the mental health clinic and she was reluctant to put that on hold while she dealt with these war-focused sociopaths. At least, she told herself that if she were to draw them out, she wouldn’t have to go looking for them in Tanigakure, but she had another concern regarding that.

She voiced this concern to Gaara, saying, “Drawing such a crowd into your village might pose a risk to the citizens here.” He shook his head thoughtfully at that, and Sakura wondered why Gaara might be willing to take such a risk all in the name of her safety. If anything, it would be more appropriate for Konoha to take such an action since she was a Leaf Shinobi, after all. Or was it really her safety that inspired Gaara to do so?

“They were able to infiltrate here through the clinic which I take personal responsibility for. It’s not in my nature to overlook such an offense so easily and I believe I owe this to you as an apology for failing to keep you safe.” Gaara’s rasping voice faded away as he assessed her reaction and Sakura saw a faint ember of emotion in his typical stoic eyes that accompanied the apology. She found herself blushing for the second time as she reassured him that everything was fine and that it was her fault for leading them here from Tanigakure in the first place.

When she brought up Tanigakure, Gaara interjected, “If we settle the matter within my country, we would be sparing Tanikagure from getting involved more than they already have. They have not taken too kindly to our investigative presence the last twenty-four hours. I thought that involving Konoha would make it seem more diplomatic, but Shikamaru’s suggestion might be best. We don’t want another situation on our hands where a small country is caught between two nations.”

Sakura nodded again at the Kazekage’s rationale, acknowledging the truth and importance of his words. “I’m willing to do anything I can to help,” she finally declared, already wondering how she would manage to entice them here.

“Let’s think it over more carefully and discuss it more tomorrow,” he said, relaxing into the chair behind his desk. “We have discovered a couple of leads that we need to explore and thinking of a plan will take some time. Meanwhile, I’d like to ask your opinion on something.”

“Okay,” Sakura responded, making to sit in the chair Gaara indicated with his hand across from the desk. A part of her wanted to grill the Kazekage for more details about the group in Tanigakure, so she could know the ins and outs about those who wanted to target her, but Sakura also believed that the shadow-being she had gone up against was most likely the scariest of them all to face, so she wasn’t too worried about the details. And if Gaara didn’t offer her more information than that, then he was probably holding back for official related reasons. So, she let it go.

“We also talked about a mental health treatment for adults as well as children. Should we begin with those you’ve captured and brought to me?”

Sakura blinked at such a statement as she recalled her conversation with the Kazekage as they strolled together along the sun-lit avenues of sand toward the village’s entrance a few days ago. “It has been an inaccuracy to think that only children could suffer,” Sakura had said to Gaara, “What if we included adults in our mental health program, too?” Gaara must have taken the proposition very seriously at the time, considering how quickly he was choosing to take action toward such a goal.

Sakura couldn’t help but hesitate in response to Gaara’s sudden proposition. Could someone like her really get through to those people, the people she had gone toe to toe with in the desert—the very people who had set out to kill her for the sole reason of her mental health efforts? She wasn’t sure.

“I’ll be there,” came the hoarse reassurance of the sand wielding Kage before her. Seeds of hope suddenly embedded themselves within her heart of doubt. “I’ll help you start.”

Sakura nodded, offering the Kazekage a smile of gratitude. Just before they had viewed the sunset together, Sakura had meant the words she had told Gaara in response to the question of who would be best to help people in need: “Like you, Lord Kazekage.” Even though Sakura silently pondered how Gaara had the availability to help her begin this process, Gaara had the same noble way as Naruto of making others believe in him.

… … … … … … … .

Sasuke sneered beyond Naruto’s shoulder as his friend knelt before the sand encased jail cell containing one of Sakura’s attackers. They had separated him from the other two, all of whom Sasuke had transported via Kaguya’s dimensions back into the Sand Village. Sasuke knew Naruto’s hands itched in the same way his did as they both witnessed Mako’s silent interrogation. The medic revealed very little as Suna’s renowned questioner sat before him just on the other side of the bars, ticking off questions one by one.

“How did you manage to subdue the medical kunoichi known as Sakura Haruno?” the investigator asked without skipping a beat.

“I drugged her. Isn’t that already obvious?” came Mako’s tort and honest reply. It was as good enough as any confession as far as Sasuke was concerned, so what was the point of continuing this charade of a civil investigation? Sasuke knew it was morally wrong to skip necessary processes and jump straight to the physical force required to extract the information he wanted, but it was hard to kick old habits of thinking.

The questioning continued. “You expect us to believe that you were able to drug an elite medical ninja without assistance? Who helped you sedate her and what was the method used?”

Mako let out a small derisive laugh that had the Uchiha narrowing his eyes lethally in the traitor’s direction. “You’re overestimating her. All I did was pretend to be her colleague and slip something into her drink. Someone who desperately wants a friend isn’t difficult to deceive.”

Mako’s declaration did two things for Sasuke. First, it was like a heavy stone dropped in Sasuke’s heart, for he felt so terribly guilty about his and Sakura’s falling-out immediately post-kiss in the medicine preparation room two nights ago. Had Sasuke left her feeling so eager for kindness that she had dropped her guard? These same words also ignited a rage so savage within the Uchiha that he felt like stepping through a portal, just to stand on the other side of these bars, inches away from the man who had the audacity to say that about Sakura.

Sasuke smirked when Naruto’s angry voice echoed throughout the jail from his place beside the Uchiha: “Drugging Sakura was that last thing you’ll ever do, you BASTARD!” Sasuke was somewhat relieved that his friend was getting worked up, too, and had actually spoken Sasuke’s mind for him.

“Calm down, Naruto,” Kakashi stated predictably, and Sasuke wanted to roll his eyes at his sensei’s typical levelheaded lecturing. “You too, Sasuke,” Kakashi ordered next, placing hands on both of their shoulders. “The last thing we need is for either of you to get involved in this personally.” Sasuke wanted to flash his sensei an affronted look for even comparing him to his loser best friend or suggesting that he was getting angry on Sakura’s behalf, but Sasuke dropped the pretense. What was the point of pretending he wasn’t just as pissed as Naruto? The Uchiha’s annoyance was visibly displayed on his face in colors of red and purple. He so desperately wished Mako would turn in his direction, catch his sharingan and spiral into the memory-searching genjutsu Sasuke had prepared for him. He would find the answers without all this unnecessary time wasting. But Sasuke knew that Mako knew better than to search him out; he had witnessed what Sasuke had done with Satou in the hospital room to learn just what he needed to know about Isao, the child Sakura cared for.

Again, Naruto voiced both their thoughts by arguing, “We are already personally involved. He drugged our teammate. She’s one of us! The least we should do is teach this guy a lesson.”

“Hn,” Sasuke breathed in agreement, surprising himself for allowing the sound to reveal his own private thinking. When Kakashi, Shikamaru, and Naruto looked over at him in surprise, Sasuke decided to further add: “we need to find out where the other ninja of this group are.”

“It appears to me that Sakura accomplished that herself, Naruto,” Shikamaru chimed in, pointing out the wounds still not fully healed on the young traitorous medic. “We’ll get the information soon enough.”

After the interrogator jotted down a few private notes on the table between him and Mako, the green-haired man pushed the round frames of his glasses back up the bridge of his nose as he made eye contact with Mako again. “Where is the rest of your group?”

“There isn’t any more. You’ve apprehended all who were a part of it,” Mako replied immediately.

Then the green-haired investigator sighed, pulling his glasses off in irritability. “I despise liars. I have methods of making you talk. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have this job. But the Kazekage—he is the only thing between you and my preferred methods of interrogation.”

Why would the Kazekage hold back against this scum, Sasuke thought silently to himself. This fake had infiltrated Gaara’s village who knows how long ago, targeted the mental health clinic Sakura had helped establish here, posed as a caring and concerned medic, earned everyone’s trust, and betrayed Sakura at just the right time.

“I’m not lying,” Mako seethed.

The green-haired man, who Sasuke grew to like more and more as he questioned Mako, narrowed his eyes and leaned across the table and said, “I’ll let you in on a secret. Do you really think that the Kazekage does not have all the answers to these questions? Why then, do you think I’m wasting my time questioning you? Think really hard, I’m sure you’re capable of figuring it out.”

And with that whispered revelation, Sasuke couldn’t help but review Kankuro’s words from yesterday in his mind: “With unmentionable methods, we were able to find out who their target was.” Did this mean that Gaara already knew how many were in the group from an interrogation that Gaara had conducted back in Tanigakure?

Naruto snickered loudly at the divulgement of the Kazekage’s secret, interrupting Sasuke’s thoughts, and Sasuke noticed that Mako couldn’t help but locate the blonde-haired jinchuriki who observed him. Mako’s face turned slightly white as he realized for the first time who exactly had been making so much noise outside his cell. Sasuke noted his fear of Naruto as a good thing and smirked when Mako made a point of dropping his gaze and locating Sasuke’s figure next, eyes trained solely on his legs. Mako’s fear of him was even better.

“Have you figured it out yet?” the interrogator asked, laughter in the question.

Mako’s eyes widened suddenly, not because he had solved anything, but because the Kazekage was suddenly there in the flesh, standing beside the green-haired ninja with a palm on his shoulder. “Enough, Kizumo. Let’s stop here.”

Glancing back at the Kazekage, the green-haired ninja sighed and let the pen he was holding drop and roll across the notepad on the table in frustration at having his job cut short.

“We will take care of this one,” the Kazekage rasped, gesturing to newly formed entrance at the back of the sand-bodied cell. “Go and see what you can learn from the shade. Don’t touch him but do what you need to do.”

A wicked smile replaced the disappointed frown on Kizumo’s face. “I won’t have to touch him, Lord Kazekage.” And with that, he exited hurriedly through the hole in the wall that Gaara had formed.

But Sasuke was hung up on the word Gaara had used at the beginning of his command to Kizumo: We? We will take care of this one?

Just as Sasuke had that thought, his stomach dropped when his pink-haired teammate entered the cell through the hole as well, Gaara gesturing for her to take the seat across from Mako that Kizumo had just vacated.

Sasuke was certain that the same frown he now wore, not only occupied his own face at seeing Sakura face the man who had betrayed her, but Naruto’s and Kakashi’s as well.

“Punch his face in, Sakura!” Naruto called to her from the other side of the cell, and Sakura turned to find him. She smiled at Naruto, reassuring him that all was okay. She found Sasuke’s multicolored eyes next, lingered on them for half a second, before turning back to Mako.

… … … … … … … … . .

Sakura shuffled the papers in a yellow file that Gaara had given her to look through before they came to Suna’s prison. The papers contained many details about Mako, his activity within the village, and his alleged backstory. “Every non-Suna born citizen has a special documentation file,” Gaara had relayed casually as they descended the steps into the underground sand-constructed prison, “with information regarding their activity and how they came to be here. It might not be much use since its mostly filled with his lies, but I figured if anyone could discern anything valuable, you might.”

“I’ll try,” Sakura had assured him, flipping through the record carefully as they walked. In truth, the file didn’t contain much out of the ordinary—or what she would expect for Mako. He had come to the village a year ago, claiming to be from a small island asking to join the medic team, claiming to be a part of the elite medic unit in Tanigakure and would like to learn from the medical advancements here. Unsuspicious of an individual hailing from a non-ninja nation, Gaara saw Mako’s knowledge of medicine as an asset and granted his request, offering Mako a place and lodging. His activity was also unremarkable as he spent the last year learning from medical staff Sakura had helped train.

Hisa, unexpectedly, did not have a file. In fact, she had managed to somehow infiltrate the village secretly, and Sakura suspected that Mako had succeeded in smuggling her in. Sakura wasn’t surprised that Gaara addressed this topic with Mako first.

“You smuggled your counterpart inside the village via the medical trade route, am I correct? When receiving medical supplies from Tanigakure, an advanced medical country, she came with and was disguised as someone with a position in the building. Is any of that wrong?” The examination was calm, unthreatening, just as if Gaara had been talking to Kankuro or Temari. The way he phrased the questions revealed that Gaara had already figured this particular scenario out.

Mako kept his eyes down, focusing on the file in Sakura’s hands. She guessed that he was evaluating its thickness carefully, determining just how much information about him and his co-conspirators was already contained within. Would he bothering lying in the Kazekage’s face, Sakura wondered.

“If you’re going to end up killing me, just get on with it,” Mako replied behind clenched teeth, his silence about Hisa revealing Gaara had been correct in his guesswork.

And to Sakura’s surprise, sand began to spiral at Mako’s feet and in just a few seconds, it reached up to form manacles around the imposter’s wrists, jerking them back behind the chair so that he was properly restrained. “If that is your wish,” Gaara responded calmly to Mako’s now wide-eyed expression of fear. “The path of life you have currently chosen will lead to your death anyway.”

Large heaps of sand began to fall from the ceiling around Mako, filling the room rapidly with sand like a tipped upside-down hourglass. Creating an invisible barrier across the cement table between them, Gaara allowed the sand to crash down around the conspirator so that only Mako’s side of the sand-bodied interrogation room began to rise around his feet like water in a cave during high tide. Sakura’s heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest.

The room buzzed loudly, and sand whipped through Sakura’s hair as the grains were summoned in Mako’s direction. Gaara’s voice was still intense enough to be heard despite his overall composure and the humming of the sand as if this very room was designed to emphasize it. “My sand delights at the blood of others and I’ve killed many before you. Since you have volunteered your life, it eagerly accepts.”

Mako began to shift anxiously as the sand reached his shoulders and he bit his bottom lip in steely resolve to quiet his quickened breathing and accept his fate. Gaara’s slow voice continued, “When someone chooses a life of darkness, a life of hatred and evil, and puts their life on the line for a cause accomplished through darkness, they are only marching towards an inevitable death.”

Sakura glanced over at Gaara in concern as the sand billowed like a wave around Mako’s chin and Mako leaned his head back and strained his neck above it, gasping for the last few breaths of oxygen belonging to him in this world.

“Why so?” Gaara asked, composed and relaxed despite the struggling man before him. “Because you have pit yourself against those who share a stronger vision—one of peace and hope and love. Naturally, the odds will be against you.”

“Stop,” came Mako’s desperate voice at last, sand knocking against the sides of his head. “Please. Stop!”

“Do you choose life?” Gaara asked Mako, and the long-subdued tears began to spill over the rims of his eyelids.

“Yes!” he cried, but the sand did not stop ascending around him. “I said yes! Don’t kill me! MAKE IT STOP!”

“Not good enough. Which life do you choose?” Gaara probed, crossing his arms over his chest in resolve to wait for the answer he wanted.

“A peaceful—" Mako whimpered, sand choking off the words as it filled his throat.

Gaara watched him thrash for just a moment and Sakura tried desperately to hold herself back despite the Kazekage’s hesitation. She had chosen to trust the Kazekage as someone to align herself with for the sake of the lives almost lost to an all-consuming darkness. He wanted to help them just as much as her. These corrupt ninja were not children as Sakura was used to. She would trust Gaara’s judgement.

Finally. Finally, the sand relented, ascending once more into the air to reconstruct the ceiling above the jail cell. And as Mako coughed violently, rubbing sand from his eyes and ears, Gaara made a final statement that made Sakura realize that only Gaara would be the savior of these ninja: “Rather than a life a loneliness, we surround ourselves with evil people. Such a life is worse because you will lose your soul to the hatred within you, no longer caring for the feeling of comradery, and you might as well be dead anyway.”

Mako sat in his chair gasping like beached ocean creature that waited for death on a bed of sand.

“I too, was like you,” Gaara announced, voice softening as he recalled the sand from Mako’s lungs and hair. “Until someone extended a hand in friendship.” Gaara gestured over his shoulder to Naruto who grinned heartily and rubbed the back of his neck shyly at Gaara’s recognition of him.

“Can you take over from here Sakura?” Gaara asked her, and she nodded, watching the Kazekage’s back as he turned in Naruto and Kakashi’s direction. When the sand bars of the cell disintegrated as he passed through them, Sakura once again found herself grateful to be considered a friend of Gaara’s and not an enemy. She had faced him head on once before, and was thankful every day afterward that Naruto had extended that hand of friendship to his fellow jinchuriki.

“Come with me,” Gaara said to the waiting Leaf ninja, “there’s another ninja you need to see. He possesses an ability like yours, Shikamaru.” Kakashi and Shikamaru immediately followed the Kazekage, and Naruto lingered for a moment, offering a hesitant look back at Sakura as he was conflicted at being summoned away from her. The blonde ninja glanced back over to Sasuke who seemed to be content just where he was as he perched himself against the wall just across from Mako’s cell, eyes closed as if he were settling to doze. Naruto rushed to Gaara’s side once he was certain Sasuke planned to stay behind.

When Sakura turned back to Mako, he was rubbing his wrists where Gaara’s sand had bound him. He chose not to look at the pink-haired medic he had betrayed, instead shamefully focusing back on the table between them. He shifted painfully, and Sakura noted for the first time that blood ran in tendrils down to his feet from his previously sustained injuries, injuries Sakura had yet to heal.

Standing, she made her way around to Mako’s back, lifting the material around the stab wound to assess it. Mako hissed in pain as the material lifted from the wound. “What are you doing?” he murmured.

“Healing you fully,” she explained, rolling up the back of his shirt against Mako’s stiffening protest.

“Don’t,” he said weakly as Sakura tugged the shirt the rest of the way up and over his head. “Save your strength. You’ll need it.” She frowned at the wound that now festered from incomplete treatment. At some point in his capture and detainment, Mako had reopened the wound. Sakura had only staunched the bleeding with her chakra immediately after rendering the other two of her enemies unconscious on the desert battlefield, and now the skin puckered with redness and swelling.

“Why is that?” Sakura asked calmly, already predicting his next answer.

“There’s more of them waiting,” he whispered quietly, so that not even Sasuke who indignantly peeked at them under thick eyelashes, could overhear. “They’ll come for you.”

Summoning the green chakra to her fingertips despite his warning, Sakura pressed her fingers to the open rip in Mako’s flesh and he gasped. “Why do you tell me this?” she asked him. “Have you really chosen to seek a new life of peace like you promised the Kazekage? Or was that a lie just to save your own neck?”

“Once they find me, and realize I have betrayed the cause, they’ll kill me anyway,” Mako whispered again. “The Kazekage has shown me mercy, but they will not. I cannot choose a life of peace even if I wish it.”

Sakura frowned, glancing over the top of his dark head of hair to admire Sasuke from a distance. Sasuke had been able to choose peace because he had the support of others. As did Gaara. This meant that they both had friends who were willing to go against the world in order to protect their choices to start over. Mako didn’t have that.

“Why did you join them? Do you really believe that there needs to be hatred and war circulating throughout the ninja world?” Sakura asked him honestly, chakra sputtering and dying as she suddenly ran empty. Her breathing quickened as a headache began to form at her temples. She cursed internally at her low supply of chakra. She needed more rest. She still hadn’t fully recovered from the battle, had used what chakra she had possessed healing Isao this morning, and was also consistently feeding a stream of chakra to her injured hand. The freshly healed wound on Mako’s back was enough to reassure her despite the strain. At least he was restored.

“I needed a place in this world. Their vision made sense to me.”

Sakura nodded, returning to the chair exhaustedly. She closed Mako’s file and said, “You had a place. You have a place.”

His eyebrows raised, as he mentally processed what she was suggesting.

“We need you,” she said to him, emotion thickening her already tired voice. “I need you—by my side in the mental health clinics when I’m here, and running things in my place when I’m not. I’ve never had such a competent partner before.”

Mako stared back at her and Sakura saw the confliction in his eyes. “How can you say that to someone who betrayed you? I drugged you. I had every intention of handing you over to them to do as they wished.”

This was true, and the reality of it twisted in her heart. However, Mako had also refused to let Hisa kill her, insisting that she was too valuable to kill right away.

“Everyone deserves a second chance,” she smiled, making to stand behind the table. “Forgiveness is how we will manage to create a peaceful world.”

Mako looked down at his feet again as Sakura turned back toward the hole in the wall that Gaara had morphed into existence. Her head was throbbing terribly now, and Sakura massaged her eyes.

“Ok,” Mako said to Sakura’s retreating form, and Sakura turned back just before reaching the exit. “If I somehow make it out of this alive, I’ll do it. I’ll help you with the mental health clinics. I’ll help you achieve peace. In return for your forgiveness, I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”

Sakura blinked at Mako, feeling somewhat comforted by the fact that even though he had betrayed her and did some terrible things, he still had goodness in him. Sakura hadn’t entirely been fooled by Mako because he was still someone worthy of forgiveness. “Deal,” Sakura nodded, taking the last step from his cell and entering a small sand tunnel that would eventually connect her back to the main stairway. As if on cue of her exiting, the tunnel closed itself off behind her, leaving Mako to take the first mental steps toward a new life.

… … … … … … … …

As soon as the wall had sealed her away from Mako, Sasuke was there, reaching for her as she leaned against the wall to hold her head. Sakura jumped when his hand found her upper arm, surprised at his sudden appearance.

“Sasuke,” she breathed, trying to smile despite the pain. “You shouldn’t be wasting your chakra teleporting carelessly.”

Sasuke scoffed as he forced her to sit against one of the tunnel walls, “You’re one to talk,” he chastised, summoning a little chakra to the palm of his only hand. “Draining the last of your chakra healing lying snakes like that one. How annoying.”

She laughed nonchalantly and Sasuke wrapped his glowing hand around the back of her neck, focusing what healing powers he possessed to the center of her nape, pushing the chakra up into her skull. As Sasuke had watched her with Mako, the Uchiha had detected a drop in her chakra signal and saw her hand reach up to touch her eyes. He had known in that very moment that she had wasted what little chakra she had left on that bastard.

After a second, she pushed against Sasuke’s elbow weekly, signaling him to stop. “That’s plenty.”

Sasuke ignored her, pressing his fingers gently into her skin so she couldn’t remove them by fighting him. “Let me have my way, or we’ll be here longer,” he mimicked, repeating to Sakura her very own words when Sasuke had pushed her hand away from his forehead last night after he had overdosed on chakra pills.

She laughed in response, her voice already beginning to strengthen from the newfound energy. Her damn inhuman strength also returned slightly, because she was suddenly pulling his palm away from her neck and no amount of his strength would be comparable enough to hers to keep it there, no matter how much he might want to.

Sakura didn’t let go of it though as Sasuke expected, but instead grasped it with her own as she, too, used her other hand to gently cup her fingers around the back of Sasuke’s neck. There was no healing or sharing of chakra as he had done for her, and Sasuke realized that Sakura simply just wanted to experience the same sensation Sasuke had felt by touching her there.

Sasuke was thankful for the darkness because the sudden intimacy made him blush and react instinctively. He smoothly pulled at her fingers, pulling her hand down so that the inside of her elbow hung over his neck instead, and he used her arm to help lift her from the ground. Sasuke led her down the dim tunnel that Gaara had apparently fashioned. What a mole Gaara was, Sasuke thought for a second, cutting corners and creating paths through the sand so he could make it from point A to point B in the shortest distance possible.

“Sorry,” Sakura whispered beside him, she too, relishing this apparent excuse of supporting her to be so near to one another. “I know physical contact isn’t really one of your strengths. If I do something that makes you uncomfortable, please tell me.”

Sasuke nodded, not quite sure what he wanted to say to that. Yes, displays of affection would always be…difficult, especially if anyone else was around. But there was a growing part of Sasuke that craved Sakura in ways he didn’t know were within him. Just moments ago, he had watched her lift the back of Mako’s shirt and run her hands along the traitor’s back and Sasuke had never frowned so deeply in his life at seeing her do so. She had performed such an action on countless ninja, including everyone in Team 7 at one point or another, and Sasuke couldn’t understand why such an act now suggested something more sensual. She had healed him on his back before and Sasuke had never been bothered by her touch, but he suddenly couldn’t stop imagining her fingers there. He had never had thoughts like this before, but then again, Sasuke had also never reached for a woman in the dark of a shared room, finding her lips with his mouth. Sasuke had crossed a line that he knew would require self-control from here on out.

“Let’s get you back to the room,” Sasuke stated as he shuffled her more securely against him. “You need rest so that you can recover.”

When they made it back to the inn which was conveniently not too far away from the underground prison, Sasuke opened the door for Sakura and stood within the frame after she entered. Observing her climb into bed and settling within the blankets, Sasuke asked something that had been bothering him ever since it occurred, “What did Mako tell you?”

“About what,” she requested in return for clarification.

“When he told you to save your chakra,” Sasuke prompted, probing his female friend’s mind for information despite her exhaustion. He had to know the details if he were going to keep her safe.

“Oh,” Sakura announced, sitting up on an elbow as she recalled the words. “He said there were more of them out there, the group that was after us in Tanigakure.”

Sasuke nodded, his suspicions confirmed. He had already guessed this, considering he had yet to find someone with the correct size and voice as the ninja he had confronted in the hallway of Tanigakure’s inn after the ninja had made an attempt to get Sakura to answer her door.

“I’m going back to the prison,” Sasuke said suddenly, waiting a moment more in the doorframe for a response.

Knowing him well, Sakura answered the question the Uchiha held on his tongue before he could even speak it. “I’ll be fine. Go.”

… … … … … … … … … .

When Sakura finally woke, it was dark in the room, except for the small ray of light shining in through the window from the crescent moon. Sakura rubbed the back of her stiff neck, not realizing until now that she had slept on it crookedly, her exhaustion apparently dragging her so deep into a sleep that she slept the entire day away.

When she sat up, she started in surprise to see that Sasuke was still awake, sitting on his bed across the room, staring out the window. Sakura instantly recognized the fierce set of his jaw as one of annoyance.

“Sasuke?” Sakura called out to him, “What’s wrong?”

When his eyes landed on hers, he narrowed them, silently contemplating his next words to her. The anger in them made Sakura rise to her feet and go over to him. She sat slowly beside him as he stared at her with an unhappiness that had Sakura’s stomach dropping. “What happened?” Sakura asked again, reaching for his fingers splayed tensely across the bed. He didn’t move them.

“Why did you agree to let Gaara use you as bait to draw out the enemy?” he asked, forcing the words past his tightly set jaw. Sakura had never seen Sasuke upset with her like this and she didn’t know how she was supposed to react. She just returned his angry stare with an even expression, sighing smally as she released his hand.

“It’s the best option we have,” she explained. “I know it’s dangerous, but Gaara thinks—”

“I know what he thinks,” Sasuke interrupted as he stood, pacing over to the window and away from her. “I just spent hours listening to potential plans designed around this mutual decision of yours.”

Sakura swallowed thickly as more of the pieces concerning his frustration came together. “What other alternative is there?” she began, trying to lead him back to the only solution that made the most sense.

“I could go to Tanigakure, myself,” Sasuke suggested. “And intercept them before they made it here. A covert operation with one person wouldn’t involve Konoha and Suna. It would be discreet.”

“You have other business here, Sasuke. Focus on your mission and I’ll worry about this. I don’t want this to distract you—”

“Before,” Sasuke whispered in the dark. “The me before could have done so. But I can’t now. What is the point of my mission to find the Otsutsuki race and eliminate them as a threat when I can’t eradicate a group of ninja set on killing you?”

Sakura’s heart stilled at such words, knowing how difficult it was for Sasuke to admit such a thing to her. Rising, she made her way over to him, tenderly tucking her arms around his sides as she had done many times before, resting her forehead against his back. “I can take care of this, Sasuke. You don’t have to worry.”

There was no scoff or sneer at her words for saying such a ridiculous thing, and instead, Sasuke gripped her fingers at his waist like a lifeline. “I know,” he admitted, turning in her arms to face her.

Sakura’s stomach dropped to her feet when he leaned his forehead against hers in the reflection of the moon. “I don’t doubt your strength,” he whispered. “But if something happened to you, I don’t know who I’d become again.”

“Sasuke,” she breathed, “You don’t have to worry about such things because I’m not going anywhere—not now—not when I can finally do this.”

Carefully, Sakura stood on her tiptoes, closed the distance between their noses, and pecked the scowling Uchiha right on the lips.

A beautiful thing happened next and Sakura locked the image into her heart to last her a lifetime. Sasuke smiled. Actually smiled—just for a moment as he sighed in relief, and then his eyes lingered on her lips in return. His face grew serious again as he did so.

Daringly, Sakura pulled on his hand, and Sasuke followed her to his bed against the wall. He hesitated as she rose onto the bed with her knees, turning so that she faced his still-standing form, and cupped both of his cheeks with her palms. Sakura gazed into his dark eyes that reflected the moon as if they were their very own black and moonlit skies. She could see the struggle within them, so she didn’t take another step, didn’t make another move until Sasuke decided to do what Sakura knew he wanted to.

As she started to loosen her tender hold on him, Sasuke found the nape of her neck with his hand, just as he had in Gaara’s tunnel of sand, and she gasped at the warmth of his fingers. He crashed his mouth against hers, a kiss that was sweltering with need and desire, one so unlike the tender first kisses between them last night. At first, she was genuinely shocked at the emotions Sasuke was communicating through the kiss, and Sakura couldn’t believe her luck. He was kissing her, kissing her as a lover would and she couldn’t believe it. Sakura responded greedily, fastening her own fingers around the back of Sasuke’s neck. She deepened the kiss, responding to his need with a need of her own. Sakura pulled him down to her as their mouths moved against one another until he had no choice but to straddle her knee.

When Sakura’s fingers found their way under the hem of his shirt, Sasuke sucked in a sharp breath and broke away from her mouth long enough to tear the shirt from his skin. He guided her hand slowly back to his spine, holding her eyes with his. “Touch me,” he instructed.

She did as he asked, running her fingers up along his back slowly. She wasn’t so sure if she had just imagined him bite back a moan as he arched his back in response to her fingernails. Was this really happening? How far was he prepared to go with her? At this pace, they would—

“Touch me, too,” Sakura whispered against Sasuke’s teeth when his mouth found hers again. He, too, found the hem of her shirt and pushed it away from the skin above her right hip. Angling them so that they were on their side facing one another, Sasuke slid his fingers around to her back and sighed her name when he felt the dip in her spine.

“I have—” Sakura began to bring up an important factor to the natural progression of events like this, but Sasuke withdrew his hand from her skin and kissed her slowly one last time before pulling away and sitting up on the bed.

“It’s not going to happen,” he declared to the dark.

Sakura couldn’t help but feel the disappointment that suddenly doused the fire in her veins. “Why not?” she asked dejectedly, sitting back up to face him. She reached out longingly and traced the now-exposed clavicle of his chest.

“Think about it more before you decide,” he said, tenderly pulling her fingers away from his skin.

“I’ve given this plenty of thought,” she admitted too hurriedly, and instantly wished she could recant the words at Sasuke’s sudden smirk as he retrieved his shirt from the floor and slipped it over his head. “I mean,” she tried again, retracting back the meaning behind that sentence. “I want this.”

“Let’s keep you alive over the next few days. I don’t want us distracted by this.”

Distracted? Did he really not know that this almost that had happened between them would distract her every waking thought for the next several days? Her mind would recall every second and the longing for more would intensify the distraction. Sakura pouted silently to herself as she treaded back over to her bed across the room. Sasuke didn’t breathe another word and neither did she, because if they spoke or broke the silence, they might find their way back toward one another in the dark and Sakura had already promised to respect his wishes when he felt uncomfortable. Damn her mouth.

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sasukeandsakuralover · 2 years ago

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2004 vs 2023

The parallel between the scenes on how they end is simply 💗💗💗💗

I swear they have their own love language

"Thank you"

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sasukeandsakuralover · 2 years ago

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He’s always so proud of his wife 🥹

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sasukeandsakuralover · 2 years ago

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No one: How many times can you reblog the same panel?

Me: The limit does not exist.

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sasukeandsakuralover · 2 years ago

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Title: Like Gold

Summary: Sasuke grapples with love and intimacy regarding his developing relationship with Sakura after returning to the village from his journey of redemption. Kind of a character study on Sasuke handling an intimate relationship after dealing with PTSD and survivor’s guilt in solitude for so long. Blank period, canon-compliant, Sasuke-centric, lots of fluff and pining, slowly becomes a smut fest with feelings.

Disclaimer: I did not write Naruto. This is a fan-made piece solely created for entertainment purposes.

Rating: M

AO3 Link - FF.net Link - includes author's notes

It's a testament to Naruto's growth that he's started picking up on some of Sasuke’s weaknesses, few as they may be.

Number one: he’s got a missing arm to exploit. In spite of the fact that Sasuke hardly considers it a handicap in most instances, it certainly causes certain… difficulties.

Number two: Sasuke has been out of commission in terms of anything other than basic training for this week and last as he finished his prescription for strep throat. Really he’s just gone through the most standard and non-strenuous forms and exercises, prior; today is the first day they’ve actually sparred no holds barred in the span of a couple of weeks. The nightmare he awoke from promptly at three thirty-eight in the morning isn't helping matters in terms of his focus, the memory of Sakura’s eyes alight with fear as he cut towards her, his missing hand crackling with white electricity, seared into his subconscious. It has him jumpy and the slightest bit unfocused, throat raw alongside ripped open memories and one cheek still feeling the cold echo of ceramic tile, as if it’s been branded there permanently by the melancholy, a deluge of white noise.

Additionally to the second point, though he’s a ninja and has trained since the ripe age of six to fulfill the needs of said profession, and he’s also very accustomed to lacking sleep, this is training with a friend in the confines of the village boundaries, not a mission. Although ninja are rarely careless when handling weaponry or letting jutsu fly, repeated practice with the same comrade allows one to be lulled toward a certain false sense of complacency, especially if there’s a hospital nearby that could easily treat the lion’s share of catastrophic injuries, let alone a world class medical ninja who runs the place and one knows for a fact is on duty.

Number three: it is blazing hot. Muggy is a better word for it, honestly; it reminds Sasuke greatly of the harshest weather he encountered in all of the Land of Swamps, heat smothering on the inhale aside from the occasional cool breeze against his sweat-soaked muscles. His clothes are sticking to him like a snake’s skin does just ahead of molting, heavier than usual and clinging every which way. It’s possible severe weather is on a collision course with Konoha, sweeping air across the continent that’s not nearly as broiling as the dirt and granite below their feet. Only time will tell what the climate will bring, later today.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly: Sasuke has shit ankles, and it seems Naruto has picked today to finally make use of that fact.

So when the idiot feigns a barrage of punches to his torso this particular morning bleeding into early afternoon, Sasuke effortlessly dodges and doesn't think anything of it, as there was a lesson, once, early in his Academy days.

“Remember, kids,” he recalls Iruka instructing, following up his words by nailing a bright red target dead center with one of the worn Academy kunai. “Quality over quantity. One kunai dead center of the target is better than five kunai that are all three inches off.”

Naruto had loudly complained, because his aim was garbage back then. He then proved it by barraging twenty kunai in the general direction of the target. Iruka had to deflect a smattering of them away from their classmates, and not one was anywhere remotely near the bullseye when all was said and done.

This was well afore his clan’s massacre, back when he was just a normal kid, so Sasuke, like most of his classmates at the time, found it to be funny.

It was more irritating than funny when they were all a little older and he was a different person and Naruto, upon gaining mastery of Kage Bunshin no Jutsu, determined said jutsu to be his new sure advantage. When they sparred following becoming teammates under Kakashi, the dobe still hadn’t learned the whole quality over quantity thing. Twenty shadow clones would surround Sasuke, yet he was able to deflect and dispel each and every one with only a few well-timed kicks and six or seven on the mark shuriken.

It did offer some sense of satisfaction in terms of the quiet gloating that came after, he supposes. He used to wonder if the idiot would ever learn, if he’d ever realize that Sasuke did - does - have shortcomings, and furthermore, if he would ever manage to capitalize on them.

Today, however, there is no sense of satisfaction, because Naruto has belatedly chosen today to exploit Sasuke’s weakness. In a sudden blur of yellow, his teammate changes course at the last second, lunging for his left shin.

Sasuke has always been - had, he corrects himself after the fact dully - ambidextrous in terms of training all of his limbs to wield weaponry and react accordingly, but that doesn't mean he is completely without fault. He's always favored his left leg to lead with, even now that he's solely right handed. It's taken significant overhaul to correct his sword forms stretched across the past several years to compensate. It's not often he's pushed to the point of being midair in the first place, so he hasn't fully corrected his tendency to land his left foot first despite his proficiency in being one handed.

Naruto yanks his stupid ankle out from under him and twists to redirect Sasuke’s weight towards him rather than away as he himself intended.

As a result, Sasuke’s jaw collides with a fist, hard and biting: his right, Naruto's left.

His shoulder takes the brunt of the subsequent pummeling toward the ground, catching his weight sliding before he rolls into baked loam and dirt. His mouth takes another hit and he grits his teeth, or perhaps grits the lack thereof.

Grunting as pain sears him - " Shit," he curses - he haphazardly spits out his right lower canine and one of its corresponding premolars into his hand. They’re knocked out nearly fully clean, he thinks at first glance, stringy pale root and all.

His jaw throbs as Naruto arrives behind him in a flash, brandishing a kunai to his neck and whooping a cheer utterly unbefitting of a ninja.

This will be a fucking pain, he notes dully, rolling his eyes as the dobe shouts in victory. He supposes this is perhaps karmic justice for all of the occasions on which he defeated Naruto in their youth and then proceeded to fully rub it in.

"HA! I WIN, I WIN! In your fucking FACE, teme!"

Sighing, Sasuke nods resignedly so Naruto will drop the kunai. He then rises slightly, brows furrowing as he shifts his weight into a seated position. Wincing, he spits out blood and what appears to be a small chunk of gum, angry pink and crimson, but no additional teeth come out, at least.

Adjusting his jaw as the dobe rises to his feet behind him, Sasuke feels for the damage with his tongue, frowning. It doesn't feel like his mandible is cracked this time at least, but he'll need to go somewhere relatively quickly if he’s to keep his teeth. He carefully grabs hold of one, rotating it until it’s at the proper angle, and delicately pushes it back in place. He then repeats the action with the other tooth as they were instructed to do in another lesson at the Academy, this one more sobering even though they all only had baby teeth at that age and could afford to get one or two knocked out without major consequence. Keep the root alive , he thinks drolly, another reiteration of Iruka’s tutelage as pain rattles into the roots of his mouth. Maybe not all of them came out clean, he realizes, at least not in the case of his canine tooth.

"Teme's gotta go drinking, teme's gotta go drinking," his best friend is prattling in a sing-song voice, completely gleeful and taking approximately no notice of the dental conundrum he’s created. “Or, you gotta tell me what you gave Sakura-chan! Which will it be, huh?!”

"What dentist here would take a walk-in?" Sasuke bites out harshly in lieu of an answer, annoyed in full now given the pain and the dobe’s crowing. His brows furrow further as he retrieves his chokuto for stowing, rising. He's seen a dental establishment once or twice on walks with Sakura, but it was on the opposite side of the village, far from the training ground he and the dobe typically use.

Naruto pauses, fists lowered from the air temporarily. Blue eyes blink in mystification.

"Huh?"

Sasuke pins him with a withering look.

"Dentist. Before the roots die, idiot. Where?"

Naruto’s brows furrow in further puzzlement until Sasuke gestures vaguely towards his jaw and the fair amount of blood now caking just below his lower lip. The confused expression morphs into something else; the dobe, apparently, has the basic decency to seem a little abashed.

“Uh. Sorry, right.”

And then a grin Sasuke loathes overtakes his teammate’s expression.

”Well, Sakura-chan can fix it quicker,” the blonde says cheerfully. “So you probably just wanna go to the hospital!"

Sasuke arches a lone eyebrow in question as he uses his tongue to hold the teeth down into place; he was unaware Sakura’s medical ninjutsu extended to dentistry. Naruto nods emphatically in answer to the question despite its lack of verbalization.

"Yeah, she's kinda an expert! She'd have to be, I guess. She’s put a few of mine back, too, but…" A faraway look shifts into existence on Naruto’s face that Sasuke drolly recognizes as genuinely fearful before he’s shaking it off. Perhaps the dobe has gotten his teeth knocked out on multiple occasions, enough for Sakura to give him an earful and then some. He would probably find it amusing if blood wasn’t leaking into every nook and cranny of his mouth.

"Anyways, want me to go with you?" Naruto wiggles his eyebrows. “Or would you rather have more alone time with-”

“Shut up," Sasuke barks obstinately as he rises, though the words in his mind are further akin to absolutely fucking not. He tilts his head to let the blood pool to his other cheek so he can spit it out with less discomfort. Maybe his teeth will be fucked up enough that he can't eat or drink for a handful of days, at least, and he can put this whole state of affairs off until it’s not a Saturday night when the bar is bound to be packed.

"Haha, okay, okay! Sorry, I know I tease both you guys a lot but it’s just…” The dobe’s voice trails off as Sasuke turns to leave without another word, setting course in the general direction of the hospital.

“Hey, hey! Wait, you're not getting outta drinking, though!!" Naruto bellows as Sasuke jumps up the nearest tree to proceed to the hospital by rooftop. “I'll invite Sai, so you can invite Sakura-chan once she puts your teeth back! Maybe tonight around nine? At Utsura Utsura; Sakura-chan knows where! This is perfect, y’know, just in time, ‘cause I gotta leave next week for the Chunin Exams so stupid early in the morning! Oh, man, and-"

"Whatever," Sasuke growls back, uncaring if he’s within earshot or not as he lands atop the nearest gambrel.

It takes only a little over a minute to arrive at the hospital’s front entrance. The roots of teeth can die quickly, he knows, so it would be unwise to wait this one out in Sakura’s office. He does spit out another small puddle of blood into the bushes and wipes the corner of his mouth to rid it of most of the drying cruor ahead of stepping through the meticulously clean double doors. It’s unlikely the hospital staff are unfamiliar with blood, but he assumes he’ll have to speak at least a few words in order to explain the situation.

It's a foreign feeling, he finds, to step through the glass. He dislikes it, as it leaves him feeling a little exposed to medical staff who are not Sakura. He expects no patient truly enjoys coming to the hospital by nature of its very purpose, though, and less still for something more akin to an emergency than a casual injury.

The receptionist gives him a once over, raising a thin eyebrow.

"Teeth knocked out," he supplies quietly, eager to get the words out before his gums are swimming with amassed crimson; he doesn’t particularly wish to have it dribbling down his chin mid speech. "Two; lower left side."

The woman nods, hazel irises calculating in a way that seems fairly shrewd for what he presumes is a civilian.

"You put them back in clean for now?" She reaches for a clipboard and begins writing down what is likely his information, which forces him to promptly realize she knows who he is, as she didn’t ask for his name. He supposes one-armed former defected ninja aren't exactly a dime a dozen in Konoha, and he does wait outside the hospital to meet Sakura fairly frequently. Perhaps she's seen him through the glass entryway; he's never thought to check.

Sasuke nods about halfway through that stream of logic, shaking off his initial discomfort; it won’t serve him in this situation.

“How long have they been out?” The woman questions as she writes, not looking up. He now observes that the ID badge clipped to her shirt reads Nakamura, Mei. It’s similar to the badge Sakura carries around on her lanyard, though there are less symbols on it. He assumes the colored icons denote different levels of clearance within the hospital’s hierarchy and archives.

“Two or three minutes,” he says quickly, closing his mouth as soon as the words are out so as not to drip blood onto the floor. It has a thin and unpleasant tang as he swallows the currant liquid instead, placing his tongue back atop both teeth after he does so to keep them in place.

"Alright. Haruko, can you take him for check-in?" The receptionist asks, swiveling to face what must be a doctor or a nurse arriving from down the hall, a woman he deduces must be in her thirties. "I'll page Sakura since it's time sensitive. She’ll want to get them fixed in the next half hour, I expect."

Sasuke frowns. Paging likely implies that she’s working on one of her projects by now, no longer seeing patients. He hopes he won't be taking her away from anything pressing. She mentioned wanting to stay later today than she usually does to work on some things towards the end of her shift; he presumes it’s related to the stacks of papers she’s been bringing home. She was going to bring supper to his apartment once she was done, along with her chess set.

Those plans will need updating now, he expects with a pang of disappointment. If she really can fix his teeth, there’ll be no getting out of going to the bar, save allowing Naruto to unleash his Rasengan on the front door of his apartment until the wood converts to kindling. He wonders if Sakura will even want to come; Sasuke has gathered in the past couple of months that she doesn’t seem to go out drinking regularly, and she might be tired from working lengthier hours today, staying until five rather than three.

An image of a very prolonged evening involving himself, the idiot with all of his antics, Sai, a boisterous bar with sticky counters, and overly full glasses of strong alcohol repeatedly shoved in front of him materializes in his mind. It’s enough to set his mouth toward a frown, if there wasn’t one already permanently affixed to his face.

"Uh… Sure," the woman named Haruko says, drawing him from his thoughts. She comes to the counter to claim the clipboard the receptionist is extending out to her. "Is Sakura-san..?"

"Sakura's in the lab; her appointments were all for this morning. I’d guess it’ll only be a few minutes at most before she's up, though. Just take his vitals so that's done with; it'll save some time." There’s enough sureness in the woman, Mei’s, voice for Sasuke to gather she’s been doing this for a considerable duration of time, although she can’t be much older than Sakura. He doesn’t recall seeing her during his brief stint in the hospital immediately following the war, but the hospital was also in a bit of a state of chaos then. It wouldn’t make much sense to have an official receptionist when one could use an extra set of hands for help amongst hundreds of wounded ninja, medical ninjutsu capabilities or not.

Sakura herself was prone to working eighteen hour shifts during that time period, he recalls. She spent as many minutes as she could in his and Naruto’s hospital room prior to his detainment as he awaited Konoha’s official verdict, but he remembers she nearly always looked exhausted, and there were two occasions where he observed her popping soldier pills so she could continue to help.

"...Okay." The doctor or nurse, Haruko, eyes Sasuke warily prior to turning. "Follow me," she intones curtly, so he does, albeit at a distance, doing his best to seem unassuming as he recognizes her uncertainty as the matter of course uneasiness he often receives from the general populace. He assumes she also may be a civilian, if she can’t fix his teeth herself, though he supposes most medical ninja are nowhere near the level of proficiency that Sakura is. Perhaps replacing teeth requires the most finely-tuned of chakra control capabilities.

While he's not truly paying attention to each step of the check-in portion of the exam - he doesn't particularly enjoy being around medical staff aside from Sakura, given his history, even with things as innocuous as getting his height and weight taken - he notes with some satisfaction during his brief stint on the scale that he's up to 167. He's managed to put on four pounds.

Sakura will probably be pleased with that information. He is, too, he thinks as the woman named Haruko timidly hands him some gauze to stall the bleeding. He promptly pushes it into his mouth, sidled aside his tongue. She then proceeds to apprehensively take his pulse and dutifully scribble more of her findings on the clipboard. He hopes the gain will partially distract Sakura from the fact that he's here as a result of him and Naruto disfiguring each other yet again.

Promptly, Sasuke then arrives at the realization that Sakura’s fingers are likely going to be in his mouth for this endeavor in the ensuing half hour, and his brows draw together in sincere disquiet.

It's at maximum two minutes following the woman’s departure from the exam room before he hears a familiar set of footsteps echoing in the quiet hallway. The door creaks open and Sakura breezes in looking every bit the professional, a white jacket shrugged around her shoulders and her own ID badge hung around her neck.

"Hey, Sasuke-kun," she greets, smiling warmly and closing the door behind her. The clipboard is in her hands. "Another spar?"

Sasuke nods, motioning briefly to his mouth. It’s no small task to force his features to relax, forcibly working out the tension in agreement with her steps as if it’s an unruly tangle stuck at the crown of one’s hair.

"...Yeah," he adds, voice somewhat distorted by the gauze; it’s soaked nearly half through at this point, he realizes. He sets to carefully removing it, as the blood has affixed it to his teeth; talking with it in will be less than ideal.

Sakura claims a seat in the swivel chair, wordlessly picking up the meager trash can to offer to him. He disposes of the stained gauze and she places the receptacle on the floor between them, glancing down at the information on her clipboard with concern prior to fully meeting his eyes.

"And?" She presses, and though her face clearly contains some degree of worry, her tone holds a fair amount of what sounds an awful lot like amused curiosity. He relaxes, then, as she doesn’t seem truly upset; if anything, she seems pleased he’s sought her out. He supposes she did specifically impart upon him to seek her expertise when injured.

Sasuke sighs, briefly deflecting his gaze to the wall as the corner of his mouth twitches entirely against his will.

"...I lost," he admits subsequently, turning his apperception back on her to find she’s attentively scanning the pages before her.

“...So you did,” Sakura murmurs, pupils making repetitions from side to side as she follows the flow of notes and data. “Two teeth, lower right side?”

He nods once in confirmation.

“Hmm,” she comments in a way that sounds absentminded, fine pink brows rising slightly as she scans the clipboard one last time. Apparently deeming she’s gathered all the necessary information, she sets it aside on the counter nearest to her in favor of grabbing a disposable glove from the box on the counter.

"Lucky for you I'm sort of a resident expert in putting teeth back in,” Sakura murmurs, smiling and pulling the glove over an unassumingly dainty hand that he knows can crack granite. His brow furrows as he again envisions Naruto hightailing it to the hospital to get his teeth reacquainted with his gums repeatedly over the years. Sasuke wonders briefly if the idiot even remembered to clean them, beforehand; it would be extremely on brand for Naruto to just shove dirt-covered teeth back into empty sockets at crooked intervals, inviting some kind of infection or root damage from an errant chunk of gravel.

Sakura must sense his confusion upon turning back towards him, because she chuckles, a high tinkling sound he loves as she rises further to reach for the upper middle cabinet.

"I’ve fixed Naruto’s back in place twice, but I have a lot of practice. Tsunade-shishou used to knock mine out all the time," she reveals, grinning as if this is the most jocular recollection in the world as she retrieves one bottle of liquid amongst several that must be medical in nature, as well as a disposable cup from a stack in the cupboard. "My upper left canine has been coaxed back in at least ten times. She got the entire upper left quadrant in one go, once. Made a game of it until I was good enough at dodging; I had to run laps around the village for every one she punched out."

Grimacing, Sasuke tries to visualize the tiny Sakura he left in the village getting knocked around by the former Hokage as the Sakura of today pours a small amount of the liquid from the bottle - it’s labeled 0.25 sodium hypochlorite - into the disposable cup. It’s an image he greatly dislikes, her spitting out blood and teeth at all of thirteen years old, but he can’t fault that Senju Tsunade’s tutelage proves effective. He expects Sakura would probably dislike or object to the majority of the training he underwent whilst operating under Orochimaru, were he to tell her about it. He himself vehemently dislikes recalling much of it.

“I’ll fix the roots back in,” Sakura mentions, garnering his attention back to the present. “It’ll hurt a bit, but only for a few seconds each. Not much worse than getting a cavity filled, really. Could you..?” Her voice trails off, and she glances at his mouth and then down at the trashcan below them.

Ah. He spits out the meager amount of red that’s pooled from his mouth into the receptacle, simultaneously wondering what getting a cavity filled feels like. Sakura then hands him the cup.

“Swish with this quick and then spit it out, please. It’ll kill any bacteria,” she requests politely, so he does. He then discards the cup and parts his lips as he meets her eyes, nonverbally giving her the go-ahead and trying to call to mind anything but the fact that her fingers are going to be in his mouth.

There’s the barest tinge of pink decorating her cheeks as she reaches out with her glove-free hand, delicately pushing with two fingers until he takes the cue and turns his head a bit, giving her better access to the area in question. Her hand then drops to rest flush against his mandible; he assumes she must have to feed chakra in from both sides.

Her gloved fingers are small, once they’re just past his lips. They’re sure, though, pressing with circumspect expertise.

Don’t think about it, he admonishes inwardly, directing his focus to the upper left corner of the room and focusing on the aroma of raspberries and strawberries intermixed with fresh antiseptic as a distraction.

The slate blue glove begins to glow faintly green out of the corner of his eye, and then there is pain where his premolar must be getting forcefully reacquainted with its socket, the nerve, and the blood vessel it left behind. It’s a strange type of hurt; not the most excruciating he’s ever experienced by any means, but also not mild. There’s a sensation of hot and cold just before it dissipates entirely; it must be attributed to the nerve fully reconnecting.

“I’ll coax the gums back into place over the tooth in a second here,” Sakura murmurs in explanation. He speculates that her focus is locked on his jaw, though he’s hesitant to look at her directly. “I want to fix the other one first.”

Her chakra pulses, docile and as if probing the damage. It’s enough to make him wince a little, as if it’s applied pressure against a direct nerve, and he’s suddenly certain that he was correct about the canine having left part of its concomitant root in his mouth.

“Your canine’s worse than the premolar; the root tore,” Sakura confirms after a moment, frowning in the corner of his eye. “This’ll hurt. I’m sorry, Sasuke-kun. Try not to bite.”

Her chakra pushes from both sides, and there are a solid ten torturous seconds of intense affliction. Sasuke screws his eyes shut in an attempt to not snap his teeth together as his instincts tell him to. It’s not worse than losing his arm by any means, but it’s extremely unpleasant, and a foreign feeling besides.

He exhales slowly once it’s over, her hand against the outside of his jaw dropping as she funnels alleviating chakra into the part of his mouth she’s just fixed. He feels his gums expand somehow as she does so, cajoled back into place to affirm the position over both teeth.

It feels bewilderingly like they were never knocked out in the first place, as if the pain he’s just experienced was nothing but a figment of his imagination. Sasuke resists the impulse to use his tongue to feel it out further, as her fingers are still there, inspecting her work.

Seconds tick by, a blur of complementary pale green and pink at his right and sterile white on his left.

"You have nice teeth," Sakura compliments softly a minute later as her chakra finally dissipates, fingers leaving his mouth and hands drawing back to herself. She peels back the bloody glove as he blinks, disposing of it in the garbage between them. She then rises, reaching for a new small cup from the cupboard, still open.

He spits as discreetly as he is capable of whilst internally marveling at her proficiency in medical ninjutsu. “...Thanks.”

"Have you ever even had a cavity?" Jade eyes glint with mirth as Sakura fills the cup at the sink, interrupting his wondering at how difficult healing such as this would be to learn. If he were to get a couple knocked out during a mission, it would be good to be able to save his teeth himself in the event he was unable to seek care for them immediately.

"...I don't know," he finally responds, shoving musings of new jutsu aside. Most of his adult teeth came in after he was already on his own and couldn't stomach sweet things anymore, so he’s never consumed any sort of sugar with them regularly, and when he does, it’s probably not enough to encompass significant damage in terms of decay. His mother also taught him early how to properly brush and floss his teeth; it’s a habit that stuck. "I don't think so."

Sakura arches an eyebrow as she hands him the cup of water, sink turned off now. He realizes that it’s for him to rinse any lingering taste of blood away, so he does, swishing the water around prior to spitting circumspectly once more into the trash can. He drinks the rest, feeling around his mouth with his tongue after he’s swallowed and noting that it really is completely healed. He’ll be able to eat and drink just fine, he gathers as Sakura returns the disinfectant bottle to its place in the neatly organized cupboard before closing it.

Pity, he thinks, resigned to his ineluctable fate now. Won't be getting out of it, then.

"Have you ever even had a toothache?" Sakura asks disbelievingly, drawing him from his musings. A soft smile decorates her features.

"No," he answers honestly as he discards the cup. A smirk begins to play at the corner of his own mouth now that he’s pain-free, because he’s about to ask a question he’s fairly certain he already knows the answer to, given her contraband drawer and the variety of sweet things he’s seen her consume in the preceding months. It’s also significantly more entertaining to tease Sakura than it is to contemplate an evening at a loud bar alongside his obnoxious best friend. "Have you?"

She flushes prettily as she takes her seat again; he’s sure she's immediately recognized the tone of voice he uses when he’s teasing her.

"...Many times," his girlfriend admits, looking away sheepishly.

"...Cavities?" He presses curiously after the clock's hand tracks several seconds, tone misleadingly innocuous and mouth twitching.

Sakura rolls her eyes, but her cheeks glow darker, and he takes that as his assumption being correct.

"...Six,” she answers after a beat. “Or, well… Six in my adult teeth. Though to be fair, most of them were before I turned sixteen.”

One corner of his mouth tilts upwards in full of its own accord; he expects that to mean her proclivity for sweets has been a lifelong endeavor, and that she probably had at least a couple cavities even while operating solely with baby teeth.

She bites her lip as she picks up the clipboard again, scanning the information there and for all intents and purposes appearing as if she is attempting to bully a smile into submission.

And then every aspect of her facial expression softens for a moment.

“You gained four pounds,” she murmurs softly, warm gaze speckled with golden flecks wandering to him meaningfully.

The other edge of his mouth lurches further upwards, dangerously close to a full smile, before he manages to catch it, biting the interior of his lip to keep it in place.

“...Six to go,” he comments.

It has the intended effect. An infectious and appreciative smile unfurls atop her lips, irises sparkling and expression clearly very pleased. There’s an inundation of seconds in which she holds his stare, beaming as if he’s simultaneously accomplished some monumental task and gifted her a palatial compliment.

Her visage then turns contemplative as she scans the rest of the page.

"Anything else wrong?" Sakura questions, inflection turning serious. "Haruko marked your pulse at forty-nine. That’s kind of low for you."

He regards her blankly for a moment ahead of recognition setting in. In response, he carefully averts his eyes, torrid heat rising to his neck.

"I'm fine," he supplies quietly.

Her head tilts to the side a little in his peripheral vision, pale rose baby hairs undulating amidst the motion. “You didn't hit your head when he got your teeth? Slowed pulse can be a symptom of a concussion."

"...No. Just above my chin. My shoulder took the hit, after."

Sakura’s frowning in full now, expression analytical at the corner of his gaze as if she’s trying to assess whether he's being fully forthcoming, during which time his neck enflames further and he exhales slowly in the hopes that she’ll drop it.

“No headache?” Sakura presses.

“...No.”

“You’re not feeling tired? Dizziness?” Her tone is nothing but courteous and caring, every bit a medic; he knows she’s just doing her job, aiming to help.

“No,” he repeats.

There is a tremendously long pause.

Then, “Sasuke-kun,” almost as quiet as a whisper, pleading, and he has never been able to shrink away from that particular tone of voice when she makes use of it, all compassion and auspicious altruism.

"...If something was wrong, I’d tell you," he reaffirms finally as he meets jade eyes drenched with concern. He's aware his adamance may be mistaken for something else in this particular instance. He in no way wants to give her the impression that he doesn't trust her medical opinion… but alternatively, he very much knows why his pulse was slower taken by a stranger than Sakura usually finds it, and admitting that openly would be rather embarrassing.

"I can't help but worry.” Her voice is small, yet simultaneously ripe with conviction. And she's right, of course; care is written all over her face, etched into the set of her mouth and the knitting of fine pink eyebrows, aggrandizing even into the posture of her narrow shoulders and the hue of shifting seafoam surrounding luminous dark pupils.

Corrosion, he recalls. Truly it's not such a big thing to admit. If anything, it’s normal; he's a man, grown and well past puberty. People are supposed to find their significant others attractive, reasonably enough that their pulse quickens. Such things should be… rather obvious, he thinks.

And yet.

Sakura's eyebrows furrow further together at his continued silence, a small crease forming between them, and her demeanor shifts toward moreso that of clinician Sakura, the one who, he’s gathered, doesn’t often abide a medical mystery, forever in pursuit of answers and the next penultimate discovery.

"...Did she use a different technique?" Sakura questions, frowning. "The wrist is the most accurate."

"...She used the wrist," Sasuke confirms after turning the statement over in his mind, searching for a way out through the admittance and finding none. He privately feels rather in the mood to bang his head against a wall; if he had sustained a legitimate concussion, it would get him out of going to a packed bar for a small number of days. Maybe even long enough for the Chunin Exams to begin in Sand, excitement crowding the idiot’s mind. He knows Naruto forgetting about this entire debacle probably isn’t going to happen, but it would've been worth a shot.

Sakura continues appraising him, perplexed, and despite his frustration with voicing his feelings, he finds her charming when she wears such an expression.

“Naruto said we’re meeting at Utsura Utsura,” he decides to say, newly subservient to his fate and changing the subject abruptly as that seems like the best and only available option at present. “Nine.”

She grows further confused. “We?” She echoes questioningly.

Sasuke’s mouth twitches.

“You, me,” he confirms, keeping the timbre of his voice nonpartisan. “Sai.”

Sakura blinks once, then repeats the motion several times, gears turning slowly but surely. Her dimple eases into existence alongside her smile; he’s relieved to witness its return.

“A Saturday night?” She questions, intonation incredulous as she arches an eyebrow in disbelief. Her lips are still curled upwards. “I can’t deny that a few drinks would be nice… Especially since we had to postpone our team dinner a bit.” Her lips purse to the side in thought, and she scrutinizes him dubiously. “But… Utsura Utsura? It’ll be loud.”

Sasuke rolls his eyes halfheartedly, although inwardly he’s relieved at her response. It won’t be so bad if Sakura’s there, and she seems open to the idea. It makes him contemplate other notions briefly, reviewing several potential options of recompense before he settles on one, though he knows she doesn’t expect it.

“...A deal is a deal.” That, at least, he’s willing to admit. Additionally, now reflecting, Kakashi would likely have been invited to drink, too, were he not swamped with preparations. Their team dinner is slated for Tuesday evening, postponed twice now due to last minute meetings and registration paperwork.

Drinking with Kakashi is not a prospect he finds particularly enthusing, given his old sensei’s uncanny ability to decipher what he's thinking. Perhaps tonight really would be better than any other option. He’ll use some of the week or two Naruto’s gone for the Chunin Exams to correct his footing so this doesn’t happen again any time soon. In addition, he’ll analyze all of the dobe’s weaknesses to use against him in their subsequent rematch.

Amusement ripples across Sakura’s face at his words, drawing him away from his contemplation.

“...Okay,” she agrees, searching his expression. “We can play chess another time. You promise me nothing’s going on with your head, though? You shouldn't drink if there’s a chance of concussion.”

If only you knew, he thinks wryly, sardonically stifling a snort. Something is definitely going on with his head, though it is not in any way an injury; he fleetingly recollects the variety of creative ways in which she occupies his cognizance, the manner in which she has sidled into each and every corner of his head.

“I promise, Sakura.”

He rises, as he doesn’t wish to take her away from more important things for too long, in spite of the fact that he’s still working through another impetus or two. She stands as well, pulling the clipboard inwards to her chest and maneuvering the wheeled chair back toward its previous station.

“...I’ll pick you up at your apartment at seven,” Sasuke finally murmurs quietly, eyeing her to gauge her reaction.

“...Seven?” She questions, free hand abandoning the chair as she blinks and tilts her head to the side curiously, peering up at him. Her lashes catch the light roseate, strawberry blonde and impossibly long.

“For dinner.”

At that, amusingly, Sakura smiles, although her fine brows rise quizzically.

“What an evening. We’re having dinner with them now, too?” She implores, tone playfully misbelieving. “I don’t know if I can eat Ichiraku’s twice in the span of four days, though. Do you think between you, me, and Sai, we could convince him to go somewhere else?”

It requires a fair amount of effort on his part to stay straight-faced, to hold his mouth in check to avoid giving himself away.

“...You and I are having dinner,” he corrects quietly, near a whisper and studying her earnestly. “Wherever you’d like.”

Fair cheeks flood arrant ruby as Sakura’s eyes widen, glit gold sparking at the edges where the fluorescence brightens her pupils. It’s not quite the chartreuse he often sees when they’re walking around the village after the street lights are illuminated for the evening, but it’s something similar, blueish light skewing jade green to nearly a pale and vivid teal at the edges.

Pretty. He would like to memorize this expression with his Sharingan someday. He wonders if she’d let him; he’s loath to do anything of the sort directly without attaining her express permission. Additionally, he’s also far too reserved to even consider asking such a thing in the first place.

For now, he thinks, shoving his self-indulgent thoughts aside for future consideration as Sakura stammers endearingly. It’s sort of funny, to watch her mouth open and close in surprise.

“O-oh?” Her skin is stained nearly the exact color of strawberries at their ripest, completely camouflaging the freckle that rests high on her cheekbone. “I…”

Her vision then sweeps away, left hand rising to rest atop her right. Her fingers have tightened their grip on the clipboard; she’s hugging it to her chest in the way she often does when he’s said something that’s caught her off guard.

“...Like a date?” She questions shyly, tone teasing as she bites at her lip; he appraises it as an effort to stifle a contented grin. It makes him feel as though he's opened some metaphorical window to allow the first spell of sunshine in, permeating his chest and heart and all the rest.

Carefully, he raises his hand until it’s level with hers, very deliberately running the backs of his fingers across her knuckles to urge her to meet his eyes again.

It works; jade irises flit immediately to his hand - she clearly didn’t expect him to do that, as her hands jilt a little at the contact, though they stay well within his range - and then upwards at him.

He affirms wordlessly, nodding and dragging his thumb tenderly across her digits once more prior to allowing his hand to fall away, satisfied that he’s been understood.

Sakura is smiling in full now, so he allows his own lips to quirk upwards a small increment in turn before he moves to depart. He doesn’t wish to keep her from her work for too long; whatever projects she’s been working on, he’s gathered they must be significant.

“...Sakura?” He murmurs once he's reached the door, pausing with his lone hand on the knob as he tilts his neck sideways to make eye contact.

It takes her a moment to respond; she hasn’t moved an inch yet, still standing firmly in place, unmoving as if in a daze.

“Yes?” She finally questions softly, wearing the rosy expression he’s come to recognize as expressly distracted. Further warmth unfurls in his chest, blood swishing and singing through his veins, no longer leaking into his mouth.

“Thank you.”

He’s pleased when her smile grows wider.

“You’re welcome.”

The hands of his apartment’s clock cycle by the hours. He counts them with a cough drop for each, beginning with a much-needed shower and dressing. He doesn’t really have designated “nice” clothing; mostly he just throws on his standard black sleeved shirt with black pants, traditional and common ninja garments. Still, he makes an effort to select the pairing that exhibit the least wear; although it isn’t a first date, really, it is the first he’s verbally categorized as one to her directly, so he feels he should make some effort at the very least. He brushes his hair more carefully than usual before shrugging on the one-shouldered sword sling he typically dons over his shirt, though this time the slot for his chokuto sits empty. He feels marginally off balance when he doesn’t wear the sling, and even moreso when the sheathe is vacant, but instilling any kind of fear in inebriated bar patrons is a recipe for trouble. Kakashi’s far too busy as of late with preparations to deal with any kind of mess on his behalf, and frankly Sasuke is tired of being the root cause of such situations. He hopes the idiot isn’t a clumsy drunk; he really doesn’t want the sling to end up smelling like alcohol.

Another hour is spent nursing two caffeinated cups of tea, leaning against the wall of the living room and studying the cherry blossom tree across the street as he sips. Presumably, this will be a lengthy evening if Naruto’s involved, and given that he’s operating on only a few hours of sleep, it seems the most advantageous course of action. The beginnings of small sakuranbo are commencing their seasonal appearance amongst the now apple green leaves, highly noticeable against the desaturation of the overcast sky and the rustling of an occasional gust blowing in from the southwest. The cut muscle in his stump is twitching, as if the barometric pressure has begun to change, but it’s not full-on pain yet; more just an over-awareness, anticipation, like something is about to happen, just within his grasp, good whereas Sakura is concerned or vexatious once the twenty-first hour arrives. It matches his mood well, and aids him in shaking off the lingering recollections from earlier this morning.

It’s somehow gotten muggier by the time he departs to meet her, in spite of the fact that the breeze has definitely picked up a considerable amount. It whips his dark hair askew at an intersection, then peters out by the next, verdure in abundance strangely still all at once as he passes the green building with its bed of alabaster azaleas, steering well clear of the swarm of people. Someone who lives there must be watering them; they’re even more overgrown and flourishing than they were when he first returned, amassing resonant blossoms.

As he pulls the glass door of Sakura’s building open, he sees the elderly woman in the downstairs apartment, Hanako, is in the midst of stooping low with the aid of her cane, irrigating the plants that enclose her egress. The cat turns amber eyes in his direction from its perch on the neighbor’s doorstep. Sasuke discerns that she must have been trying to tip the spout of the watering can to catch on the lowest few pots, although her balance seems undeniably off and her face betrays a grimace of pain.

“Hello,” the woman says, straightening a little to nod his way as the cat lazily strolls towards him simultaneously. Though he’s pretty sure Maru won’t try to bolt through the open entryway, Sasuke promptly closes the complex access door completely shut behind him.

The pained expression on Hanako’s face shifts into a wrinkled smile once she’s fully upright. Her eyes follow Maru as he saunters up to Sasuke, curling familiarly about his shin as if he’s greeted him a hundred times.

“I’m sorry, dear. I have a hard time remembering things sometimes,” Hanako says as he crouches briefly to offer Maru a scratch around his ears as he knows most cats like. “Your name..?”

“...Sasuke,” he intones quietly, thinking to himself that the feline has perhaps gotten fatter since the last occasion he’s seen him, now that he’s seeing him up close.

“Ah, yes. That was it,” Hanako says, drawing his attention back to her. Laugh lines crowd her mouth as she smiles widely, nodding in the direction of his shin. “You like Sasuke, don’t you, Maru?”

The cat makes some sort of trilling noise in acknowledgment of his name before a purr ripples through its throat. Sasuke gives him one additional scratch ahead of rising back to his full height, analytically surveying the smallest pots nearest the woman’s doorstep.

“Now, now,” Hanako admonishes as the cat curls its tail to encompass his other shin now, back arched. “We don’t need to get Sasuke covered in orange fur. Here, kitty, kitty.”

The cat cambers around Sasuke’s leg reiteratively, purring still, before trailing back to the center dwelling, where it promptly rubs its head affectionately against Hanako’s ankle.

“I was just watering my plants here,” she says jovially, motioning towards the pots. “Feels like it will rain tonight, you know? I try to mimic the weather outside for them, you see. That’s what my own mother taught me to do with indoor gardens. The plants know what to do, she’d say. No need to shelter them from the climate; we just help them along.”

Sasuke nods once, gaze traveling back to the planters inquisitorially. There’s one filled with freesia, another with carnations, and a third that’s difficult to identify from this distance. Conceivably her joints aren’t quite steady enough today to hold the watering can directly above the shortest pots, or at least, not long enough to fully sodden it without spilling moisture onto the floor where it would quickly become a slipping hazard.

Without speaking, he slowly approaches and extends his lone hand in pursuance of the navy blue watering pail. The old lady’s pale eyes widen momentarily in surprise, but she hands it over quickly, countenance sinking into clear relief.

“Well. Thank you, young man,” she says, tone grateful as he wordlessly tips the spout atop the soil the carnations are embedded in; they’re variances of rich pink and violet. “My hip is bothering me today. I broke it… well, it was a few years ago now, I think. Hard to remember when you’re as old as me, but I took a spill.”

Sasuke dips his chin again in acknowledgment, finishing his work on one pot before adjusting the watering can to drip moisture into the planter beside it: the freesia this time, more variances of ultraviolet and near magenta, intermingled with the occasional true red. They’re firmer than the average flower, stems thick and solid. They don’t bend beneath the moisture at all as he tips it atop them, watching the drips race down sepal and stem.

It’s unusual, he finds, to examine someone else’s flora following the slow and steady study he’s been afforded of the ones Sakura keeps around her home. Hanako’s are more intensely pigmented than hers, mostly florals with the colors high in saturation and skewed in hue; they remind him a bit of the garden at the Uzumaki household, a contrast against the pastel that lingers in his memory most often. The latest ones he’s noticed with clippings missing are the pale alabaster cosmos blooming on Sakura’s balcony, along with two florets from the lilac moth orchid beside her front entryway. He’s still not sure what she does with them; he realized the last evening he was invited to sit with her on the balcony that there aren’t any vases in her room, and the moth orchids blooms were a bit too big, he thinks, for interweaving into someone’s hair. Perhaps she’s using them in her research in some way, testing theories on poison antidotes or other medically-oriented fields he surely wouldn’t understand. It’s also possible she brings them to the different patients under her care within the walls of the hospital, enlivening their sterile white rooms with a burst of bounteous chromaticity; it’s something that would fall well within her character, though he does sort of wonder if purchasing flowers from Yamanaka Flower Shop would be more convenient, given her busy schedule. Conversely, he also privately understands that blooms fostered by one’s own hand are feasibly more meaningful.

There’s the quiet click of a door opening and closing above them that he recognizes to be Sakura’s. It’s shortly followed by her familiar gait, flouncing steps echoing across the landing above them and down the stairs. Maru slips away from Hanako in his peripheral vision; Sasuke assumes it’s to greet Sakura with the same lazy friendliness he himself received.

“Oh!” He hears Sakura’s surprised voice behind him, punctuated by a brief pause in her steps on what he calculates to be the middle of the stairs. “Sasuke-kun. Hanako-san.” Additional steps resound as Sasuke souses the last pot. Now that he’s close enough, he’s identified it as a bantam calathea plant.

He’s completely unprepared for what he sees as he turns his head to acknowledge her greeting, lifting the can slightly to lessen the flow of water to a trickle.

Sakura is descending the stairs clothed in a lavender dress, the color only a smidge lighter than the seal that adorns her forehead. Wide and loose-fitting lace straps, along with a thin tie, frame her collarbone and chest. A lengthy expanse of lace continues all the way down the garment, framing small center buttons on both sides that only end at the hem, just above the middle of her thighs.

“I could’ve gotten those for you earlier,” she says kindly. “I’m sorry; I should have checked.”

“It’s alright, dear. Sasuke here was kind enough to help,” he hears only faintly, utterly fixated on the entrancing freckle adorning her inner thigh, in plain sight as she takes the last two steps down the steps. Meager ties ornament the sides of the dress, too, tiny ribbons that tighten the fabric enveloping her waist.

It’s just as form fitting as her training gear, and thus it is just as distracting, though definitively more dainty; it may be what people call a sundress. It shows more of her collarbone and shoulders than anything else he has ever seen her wear.

“You know how my hip gets when it’s going to storm,” Hanako is chuckling as Sasuke blinks again, because Sakura stoops to give the cat a scratch at his mane at the bottom of the stairs. Expeditiously, he turns his focus back to the calathea plant in lieu of letting his vision roam across her cleavage.

Nice is too subtle a word for how she looks, he thinks as he rises, his goal of assisting in watering the greenery completed. Alluring is a more apt description. Supple is another word that materializes in his mind, the toned softness of her thighs burned into his retinas. He’s struggling to force his ruminations away from a temptingly new and utterly foolish mental combination that he has never considered: Sakura and lace fabric.

“It’s supposed to storm?” Sakura questions as she also rises back to her full height. His brain mentally catches up to the conversation as she adds, “Want me to look at your hip quick? I can alleviate the pain for you, if your medication isn’t helping with it.”

Hanako laughs again. “Well, I’m not sure on the weather. I don’t think the forecast calls for it, but…” She looks at Sasuke, then back at Sakura.

“Well… I think you’re probably going on a date, right?” The elderly woman observes more than asks, a knowing gleam in her eyes. “That’s a lovely dress, dear. I wouldn’t want to take up too much of your time.”

Sakura’s fine pink brows are knitted together in concern. Jade eases in Sasuke’s direction briefly, expression questioning, and it is so stupid how his gaze is drawn to her lips. He surmises she might be wearing some kind of makeup; they seem a slightly different color than they usually are, and subtly shiny.

Men are weak creatures, he thinks wryly, making a valiant attempt at pushing the unbelievably stupid thoughts tugging at his subconscious away into the darkened flames of a denotative Amaterasu.

“...I don’t mind,” he says absentmindedly, tearing his eyes from her mouth finally to meet her gaze intentionally. They still have plenty of time before they’re supposed to meet the idiot and Sai.

A sweet smile overtakes Sakura’s face at that, and a pleased, unnamed something turns over in his chest at having made her happy, as she then nods in the old woman’s aspect.

“Ah. Well, thank you,” Hanako says at his right, rotating to scuttle slowly back towards her door with the aid of her cane. “Come in, then.”

The cat trails after his owner, who leaves the entryway wide open, gradually making her way through what appears at first glance to be an entryway tremendously similar to Sakura’s.

Sakura makes her way past Sasuke to accompany the woman into her living quarters, and Sasuke promptly realizes that the back of the dress is also cut rather lower than most of her clothing. The scattering of freckles that remind him of serpens caput is in plain view, and there are a couple more on the middle right of her back that are now on open display.

She slips off her shoes - they’re nicer than her usual sandals, too, and taller - and disappears into the residence behind Hanako as if she knows the layout of the place. Perhaps she does; it doesn’t seem as though the woman was shocked at all that Sakura could help with her hip. She might do this rather regularly if she knows the woman’s hurting.

There is a scattering of seconds where Sasuke finds himself pondering a multitude of things: namely, for some reason, how the crest that adorns most of Sakura’s normal clothing must rest right atop that series of freckles, a white circle of fabric concealing them from view, and how he would like to trail his fingers there, or maybe his lips.

He doesn’t realize that his girlfriend has left the door open for him behind her, a silent invitation, until her head pops momentarily back around the entryway annex from the interior of the apartment. There’s a unique expression on her face, jade eyes silently questioning, as if to ask if he’s going to follow.

So he does, carefully removing his shoes and closing Hanako’s front door, traipsing past the threshold into the living room, where he chooses to linger at the edge of the space.

It is indeed a comparable layout to Sakura’s, though the kitchen is on the far wall in front of him rather than annexed on the right. There’s an entry out to the patio from the middle of the kitchen, easily seen through two windows and an all-glass screen door. His gaze is drawn to it at first, as the cat lazily makes its way to said entrance, resting on his haunches after coming upon it and seeming keen on beholding the outside world in all its motion and liveliness; it would be a good vantage point from which to view the birds, he surmises as he observes. There’s likely a nest under the moderate amount of awning he knows is affixed to the exterior building; he’s walked by it enough to have witnessed paltry fowl congregating nearby at least once or twice.

There are several things throughout the space that definitively foretell that an older woman inhabits the space: the mug on the dining table is antiquated, cream Hirado ware with inlaid indigo patterning, along with an army of small photographs framed in aged wood, hung meticulously straight across the expanse of wall. The pictures themselves are a testament to her life; they’re somewhat colorful up to a point, then fading into washed out sepia, followed shortly thereafter by black and white photos only; he realizes they must be arranged in chronological order.

It’s strange to see the connections forged in someone’s life laid out so plainly and visually. Many of the pictures include Hanako herself, although she gradually gets younger along with the children who are in the photographs with her. The newest one shows only a little girl, possibly five or six, sleeping in an armchair with Maru curled around her. It must have been taken here in the apartment, perhaps a chair out of sight in the woman’s bedroom once the girl was tired out for the afternoon. It doesn’t really look like it’s too new of a picture, but he notes the cat is significantly skinnier in it, so he gauges its age to be at least two or three years.

There is a scene of the girl at age two or three, out at a festival enwrapped in a small fuchsia kimono and holding a hand that’s barely in frame. Another features the girl as a baby, swaddled in a pale pink blanket that strikes him as having been knit by hand. A young man and woman along with Hanako smile at the camera, which prompts Sasuke to confirm what he suspected: the girl is her grandchild. The man must be her son, then; Sasuke observes that they share similar facial features, the same deep-set pale blue eyes and pronounced cheekbones. Sure enough, the man gets younger as his vision trails left; there is one of Hanako smiling next to him and the young woman in the other pictures on what must have been their wedding day. The bride is wrapped up in a pure white shiromuku, as bright as the fresh snow behind the three of them.

As he visually traces the line of pictures down the rest of the wall, he frowns, because the story it communicates isn’t necessarily a happy one.

It is clear that at one point Hanako had two sons. The one featured in the more recent pictures seems to be the younger, as the other is significantly taller in comparison in the pictures that include them both: an outdoor picnic in clear weather, a standard family picture at a formal studio, and finally, a tiny one in which the elder son proudly wears a Chunin vest with Hanako and her other son smiling on either side of him. It’s clear that he’s just attained promotion status, although the picture has faded to the extent that the trademark green is more of a brown in the swath of sepia.

The photos neatly transition into black and white prior to that; both boys when they were younger, playing with some sort of toys on a wood floor or sitting on Hanako’s lap in a rocking chair or a scene from a birthday, faces smeared with cake. There’s a man Hanako’s age in two of the earliest that must have been her husband, though it’s hard from the distance and the size of the photographs to discern any defining features. There’s a hitaiate tied to the man’s arm in one of them.

Hanako’s spouse has been gone a long time, and it’s probably fair to assume that he died in the line of duty, given their age at the stage of the photographs. The lack of later pictures of her eldest son implies that he, too, is gone. Sakura didn’t say the woman was a retired Shinobi, though; she must be a civilian who married one, and thus one of her sons became one, too. He hopes her youngest son is still alive, at least. He examines the recent pictures anew, trying to place when they were taken by how similar in saturation they are to the oldest pictures Sakura has displayed on her own wall.

A blur of pink moves suddenly in Sasuke’s peripheral vision, and he shifts his focus to Sakura, shaking off his conclusions as he realizes he’s been staring at the photos and that it might be poor manners, on top of the fact that speculating on the woman’s family is really none of his business.

Hanako has taken a seat in a creaking rocking chair, a well-worn cushion placed atop its wooden frame in the middle of the living room. There’s an end table with an already lit lamp on one side, and a modest stool with a pillow placed on the other. He would think it was an ottoman to rest one’s feet, except for its placement; it’s on the far side of the chair, and every square inch of the pillow is clearly covered in orange fur. It must be a spot exclusively for the cat.

“Lint roller’s still by the door,” Hanako is saying as she shifts slightly, giving Sakura easier access to what he assumes is her bad hip as her hand begins to glow verdant. “Feel free to use it up if you need to. I’d feel terrible if your dress was coated in fur; that purple is such a lovely color on you.”

Sakura laughs, despite her jade eyes still being emphatically focused. “It’s just a dress, Hanako-san,” she says, waving her free hand noncommittally. “Fur comes off. No big deal.”

Though he obviously says nothing, Sasuke inwardly agrees with Hanako; he very much likes the dress. The angle Sakura’s working at puts her in a position that allows him to study the graceful arch of her nape shifting into her trapezius; nimble muscle flexes there accordingly as she speaks and moves, swaths of lace framing her torso and accentuating her curves. Everything about her is slender and lithe, he deems as he studies the expanse of bared skin. She’s muscular but slight, all soft curves that scream dainty to the average unacquainted admirer, although he knows she is anything but. The dress somehow suits her just as well as her pristine doctor’s coat, or the purple skirt she wears from time to time, or the training gear that partially bares her midriff and besieges his weaker moments.

There is a long moment of quiescence as he watches her, fine blush hair turned desaturated dusty rose in the fading light of indoor evening against creamy skin; it sweeps her neck once as she moves, as if to examine the hip she’s working on through the woman’s house dress. It could be she’s probing for a nerve there with her chakra, cynosure following the impulse like muscle memory even if she can’t see anything with them. She does that recurrently if she’s helping with his bad arm, chakra tendrils threading in until she finds the nerve she must have been looking for, sight intently preoccupied on his stump as if in search of something she can’t see below the marred skin.

He then realizes that deep-set blue eyes have shifted to him knowingly at the edge of his vision, and that he’s been staring at every inch of Sakura’s exposed skin for the better portion of at least a full minute if not two. His neck warms in embarrassment as his gaze shifts to the elderly woman’s briefly; her expression tells him that not only is he caught, but also that Hanako is endlessly amused by what she’s just observed, crow’s feet crowding the edges of her senescent eyes in clear delight.

Wizened pupils glance down momentarily as if she’s briefly searching for something - perhaps to gauge how Sakura’s healing is progressing, as she must be nearly finished by now - before ice blue settles back in his direction as if reassured by what she’s seen.

He soon discovers the reason: privacy for what she’s about to do. Chin tilted far enough upwards so that Sakura can see the woman’s wrinkled grin but not her eyes as she heals, Hanako winks at him.

Dinner is a quiet and breezy affair at a small temaki stand located on the far south side of the village, far from the central commotion that Konoha can be during the dinner rush. The place reminds him of Ichiraku’s a bit, though its counters are simple shiny black instead of red currant, dark as obsidian and a sharp contrast to the pale pastel beauty sitting beside him. Sakura’s eyes glow as she chatters animatedly about anything and everything: why she likes this place’s umeshiso flavor the best of any of the fillings offered in Konoha’s restaurants, how she’s going to take him to meet Kakashi’s cat at some point in the next couple of weeks while their Hokage is away, and how Ino wants her to watch some new movie Sai discovered soon; he assumes that means the kunoichi is also going to be stationed solely in Konoha during the next few weeks as a precautionary measure, no missions to crowd her time.

Sasuke admires her mostly silently as he chews his own dinner - zuke maguro flavor - appreciative that all of his teeth are intact and asking a whist question now and then. Gray overcast sky deepens in grayscale value as the zephyr picks up slowly but surely around them.

“Hanako-san might’ve been right about the weather,” Sakura remarks, carefully popping the last roll into her mouth with delectation and chewing as she angles her head, clearly observing the sky through the flapping banners behind them that confine the restaurant. Small flyaway pink strands whip in the wind, and he arrives at the rather sudden realization that Sakura’s hair is a bit longer now than when he initially returned. He wonders if she’s growing it out, or if she’ll cut it in the near future. He would like it either way, he thinks; he’s immensely fond of the color, and, conjointly, of the way it feels in his hand on the few occasions he’s touched it, the pellucid evidence of trust he’s beginning to earn back.

Nine comes too soon.

Utsura Utsura, etched in prognostic neon scarlet and sky blue lettering, hovers above the entrance to the bar. It’s luminescent against the cloudy and darkening sky, and bright to the extent that it hurts his eyes a little. It’s clearly packed, he deems as they approach the building, boisterous noise spilling into the street surrounding the place and the faint smell of alcohol filtering into the air, barely caught on each breeze that pushes past them both.

It is, in fact, the bar Sakura pointed out just after their first team dinner upon his return to the village, only a few blocks from Ichiraku’s, and it’s certainly the exact type of bar that the idiot would enjoy, hugely loud and filled to the brim with people. Sasuke analyzes it, frowning and trying to mentally prepare himself for a slew of annoyances: lack of personal space, loud voices, and what will undoubtedly be at least a few drinks pushed into his hand via the dobe unless he comes up with some sort of distraction.

“Not too late to escape,” Sakura teases, grinning up at him as they approach. He can faintly make out the reflection of the sign’s lettering atop the crown of her head, pale rose easily catching the light.

Sasuke then promptly rolls his eyes, exhaling a sigh.

“...I’ll never hear the end of it if we do.”

Her grin pulls wider, lips catching on a tooth, and he’s pretty sure there’s a hint of a flush gracing her cheeks.

“We won’t,” she agrees, pulling the door open by its worn handle. He follows close behind her, and this ear-splitting odyssey begins.

It’s a sea of people as he assumed it would be, nearly all of them plainly in the beginning stages of inebriation and holding various glasses or bottles. A handful of them take notice of the newcomers filtering through their midst, focus succinctly flickering to Sakura with some interest before they notice Sasuke lurking at her heels; then, it seems, most of them can’t look away fast enough, eyes glazed intoxicant but not to the extent that they are incapable of recognizing him.

Good, he thinks, gaze briefly locking on Sakura’s back. For once his lack of people skills may work in his favor.

The interior of the place is darker than he imagined, although he supposes most bars probably are. He rarely has entered any similar establishments, barring when it’s a necessity to gather intel or track someone down for a mission. Lanterns he assumes must be wired to the electricity in scarlet and sapphire line either side of the building, framed by softly glowing lights in the same colorway. It extends wall to wall, creating alternate “sides” of the bar, one burning pale red and one glowing lightning blue. A wall of alcohol and a menu sidles along the blue side, fronted by a long cobalt countertop edged by stools. Tall tables litter the middle pathway, and smaller, densely packed ruddy booths line the far expanse.

Commensurately, it’s enough people milling about to make him feel somewhat out of his element, and more than a few of them, those that don’t manage to look away quite as quickly as they think they do, fleetingly display either enmity or unease at his presence. Personal boundaries are something that doesn’t really exist here, he gathers as they venture through the throng of patrons. He supposes that goes both ways, though; he dislikes personal space, and in return, a rather large number of people dislike him. If it forces them to make their way to a different bar, then so be it. It could do with less people for one night.

Sakura’s dress seems lighter in here, he notices, training his surveyance on it in the crowd. It catches almost neon pink on the red side and periwinkle on the blue. A clearly graceless civilian drunkenly steps in front of her, cutting her off as they approach someone across the way that they’re shouting about knowing, drink sloshing in their hand. Sasuke stops as a result, crowding closer to her than he normally does in public; her hip skims by his for a millisecond.

“Naruto usually gets one of the booths,” Sakura tells him as she shifts, near shouting to be heard in the raucous and deftly avoiding any of the civilian’s booze splashing that would mar her dress. It’s hard to tell amidst all of the noise, but there’s music lilting in and out, he realizes for the first time after she stops speaking and moves again, heading towards the far corner of the building with purpose.

Sure enough, they mill through the people a few additional augmented steps and finally arrive at a vantage point to see the interior portions of the last few booths; Naruto and Sai are both seated at the second from the end. A trio of juniper Chunin vests, teetering blue under the neon of the bartop mirroring the booth, captures his attention briefly - wearing official ninja garb out on a Saturday night seems odd to him, though he can hardly critique it, given his own state of dress is the most basic ninja clothing - but he redirects his attention to the booth, as he doesn't identify them as being anyone he's overly familiar with. Were it Shikamaru or Choji, he would at least acknowledge them, should they look in his direction, but they aren't. He wonders if Choji will both be out of the village for the exams, then. Sakura already offhandedly mentioned that Shikamaru would be accompanying Kakashi and Naruto, the exams being considered an opportunity for coordinators of the Shinobi Union to also meet.

“SAKURA-CHAN!” Naruto shouts, loudly enough to be heard above absolutely everyone and then some; an exceedingly high number of the heads turn their way. “TEME!”

“Naruto,” Sakura greets in turn, near shouting as the dobe squeezes out of the booth to stand; his drink doesn’t quite spill, but it’s close. Sasuke’s brow knits together as she briefly greets Sai as well, prior to sliding into the center of the booth. She must usually take the inside seat, he realizes as she scoots, in a spot that leaves ample space for one more person on either side of her. If Ino ever comes to these gatherings, she likely sits in the vacuum of space left between Sakura and Sai.

Sakura flashes him a smile once she’s in place, and he takes it as a cue that he’s supposed to sit between her and the idiot. He supposes that makes sense, as his best friend is still standing, a shit-eating grin overtaking his expression as he raises his glass to take a sip.

So Sasuke carefully slides into the spot next to her, not close enough to touch, but nearly so. It feels a little like he’s just entered some sort of trap as the dobe takes his place again, though he gives Sasuke plenty of space on his side. He inwardly surmises that perhaps it’s just his personal disdain for social gatherings coloring his experience.

“Hello, Ugly,” Sai greets plainly, smiling in that odd way he has, clutching a can of lemon chu-hai; it’s the same brand he’d been drinking at the movie night. “The hue of your dress is nice.”

Sakura smiles encouragingly, shifting in her seat in what Sasuke realizes is her kindly trying to give him additional space, although she doesn’t need to; he doesn’t mind.

“And Traitor. I have not seen you in a while. I hope you have recovered from your illness?” The inflection of the statement is odd, in a way that Sasuke wouldn’t have recognized as out of place were Sai not forced to nearly shout to be heard in this establishment.

Sasuke nods in acknowledgement, at which point Sai smiles slightly wider.

“Ugly tells me you finished the book,” his replacement informs him, causing Sasuke to wonder when Sakura has seen him, but he shrugs it off, assuming it was probably with Ino. “Did you identify a favorite piece?”

Sasuke dips his chin once more. “...Page two hundred fourteen.”

Immediately, Sai pulls a miniscule sketchbook and a pencil from his pocket, flipping it open to apparently scribe the page number atop an empty upper corner of paper. It makes Sasuke frown; he didn’t anticipate the artist would actually put in the effort to look. He returned the book the other day, along with the one he finished and discussed with Sakura while he was ill and out of commission.

“Wonderful. I will study it on my next trip to the art section,” the artist says simply, stowing the sketchbook back into his pocket. “I learned much about kenjutsu and sword formations from the one you recommended.”

Sasuke simply blinks, unsure what he’s supposed to say in response to that.

“Eh?” Naruto questions loudly, setting down his glass finally. “Kenjutsu?”

“Sasuke and Sai traded book recommendations,” Sakura supplies helpfully, setting her elbow on the table so she can prop up her chin with her hand. Her green gaze meets Sasuke’s before looking at Sai.

“Yes,” his replacement confirms. “I learned that kenjutsu typically operates from five primary stances known as Itsutsu No Kamae. Sword held overhead, to the side, middle thrust, sword down, and sword held horizontal. There is a chain of motions that connect them all, which makes the style effective at adapting to most any battle conditions. Muscle memory is instrumental to this style, as repetition trains the body to react instinctively.” Sai pauses as Sasuke blinks, because he’s pretty sure that was the opening passage of the book he recommended nearly word for word, recited in a near shout to be heard in the busy bar.

“It makes it more impressive that you have adapted your style rather than replace it following your amputation,” Sai continues bluntly. Naruto and Sakura both cringe a little in his peripheral vision on either side of him, though Sasuke supposes Sai means well, so he tries to take it as the commendation it’s intended as; his replacement has seen him wield his chokuto once or twice on the couple of missions they were assigned together thus far.

“You are missing to my estimate approximately fifty-three percent of one arm, and yet you display remarkably fluid swordsmanship with your remaining one. I would pick you as the most skilled kenjutsu user I have met. I found myself curious while reading if you have always been right hand dominant, or-”

“Sai,” Sakura cuts in, voice somewhat reminiscent of a parent admonishing a child when they’ve been unintentionally rude. Sasuke thinks it’s also perhaps accompanied by a swift yet subtle kick to his replacement’s shin underneath the table. “I know you mean that as a compliment, but it comes off as tactless. Too direct.”

An expansive pause passes, Sai seeming rather like he is working through a math problem in his head as his dark eyes observe Sakura. He then looks back at Sasuke.

“My apologies, Traitor,” he offers, to which Sakura’s smile reappears in his peripheral vision. “It was not my intention to be rude.”

“...It’s fine,” Sasuke says, because it is. He’s in no position to fault anyone for being overly blunt, and he’s been slowly but surely coming to sure terms with the fact that Sai’s strange mannerisms and lack of social intuition stems from a childhood that was, similarly to his own, poignantly fucked up. Kakashi summarized the whole debacle that was Sai’s addition to Team Seven while visiting Sasuke in the hospital after the war; Sai’s Shinobi career found its beginnings in a secret branch of Anbu established by Danzo, where he was cut off from normal interactions early in his orphaning and trained to be emotionless. Sasuke never doubted the truth of Kakashi’s words, nor did he believe anything but the worst in regards to any sort of program Danzo had established, but it’s only by spending extended time periods around the artist upon returning that the reality of it has become abundantly clear.

“Right-handed with writing, ambidextrous with weaponry,” he decides to add after a moment of retrospection; the question was asked with genuine curiosity, and there was a compliment attached, besides, however roundabout.

Sai blinks, unhurried and assessing. Sasuke notices Sakura looking between both of them for a couple of seconds at the admission, expression betraying a little surprise, though she doesn’t say anything.

“Ah. Thank you for answering, Traitor.” His replacement smiles, then.

Sasuke dips his chin, satisfied.

“Wait, wait,” Naruto intercedes, at which point Sasuke slides his attention to the opposite side of their booth. “Two questions; what the hell is an amby-destress??”

“Ambidextrous,” Sakura corrects as Sasuke rolls his eyes. “It means you can use each hand equally well.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” the dobe comments, nodding enthusiastically. “Right, right! I knew that.”

Imbecile.

“Wait, so then my next question! What did teme have to read?”

“Art From Around the World,” Sai supplies, to which Naruto snorts, loud and attention catching. Sasuke turns only to see him shrink away, unoccupied hand held up in defense, which can only mean Sakura is leveling him with a frosty glare from his other side.

“Sorry, I’m sorry! Sakura-chan, I didn’t mean to- to-” The dobe stutters, clearly searching for words to explain himself. “I mean, uh, it’s just still so hard to picture him reading a book! I kinda thought that was just an excuse to hang out with you, ‘cause no one but you likes those things-”

Now Sasuke narrows his eyes. “Bold words from someone who can’t pronounce echinacea,” he retorts harshly, swiftly cutting off whatever nonsense he was about to say. This prompts the idiot’s brows to knit together as he shrinks further into his seat, looking properly sheepish as he takes a sip of whatever poison he’s drinking; it doesn’t smell pleasant from where Sasuke’s sitting.

“Ugly is not the only one who likes literature. Beautiful likes books. I do as well,” Sai cuts in, tone perfectly level and drawing everyone’s attention back to the opposite end of the booth. “Have you considered that you do not like books because you are a dumbass?”

On purpose and excessively audibly, Sasuke snorts. He thinks he can see Sakura trying to hide a smile.

Leave it to Sai to put the dobe in his place. They’ve barely been here a few minutes and already his teammate has inadvertently earned himself chastisement; Naruto is guffawing, mouth hanging open like an idiot.

“I’m not a dumbass-”

“When I asked you, you said you hadn’t read a book since you were in the Academy,” Sai interrupts, tone still completely level and utterly devoid of emotion. “It is possible you have forgotten how to, as it has been nearly eight years since you graduated. You must hone your skills to stay sharp in them.”

The dobe is glowering icily across the table when the waitress arrives, holding a lone beverage that looks like it’s about ninety eight percent sugar: some sort of dark pink concoction, blended with ice and topped with a wedge each of lemon and lime. There’s a straw in her other hand.

“For Three Second Haruno,” the waitress says simply, grinning and motioning towards the northernmost part of the counter where the three ninja in Jonin vests sit.

There are a solid three seconds where Sasuke positively, invidiously bristles, mouth sinking into a sharp frown and mood souring all at once.

And then he realizes that the three ninja at the counter are paying absolutely no mind to how Sakura reacts to the drink; they’re still faced forward, slouching as if they’ve had a long day and engrossed in their conversation, as if there’s no reason to spare so much as a glance for Sakura’s reaction.

He is very curious as to what the nickname means, but whatever it is, it’s clear it wasn’t intended to indicate any romantic interest. The frown stays, but he relaxes his eyebrows, realizing they were furrowed. He then glances at Sakura next to him, realizing he would like to see her reaction.

He finds her just finishing up the action of rolling her eyes.

“Tell Genma I say thanks,” Sakura tells the waitress in a tone that suggests this is a regular occurrence. She tentatively reaches for the drink, at which point Sasuke realizes he has a relatively ample view of her cleavage when she moves from this particular direction, also; he promptly looks away. “But he doesn’t need to keep doing this. It’s embarrassing.”

“Yeah fuckin’ right, Sakura-chan!” Naruto laughs heartily, reaching for his own booze and seemingly happy to draw the conversation away from his lack of reading comprehension and poor vocabulary. “As if he’ll ever shut up about it. And he shouldn’t! It was awesome! Also, he kinda owes you.”

Sasuke blinks, perplexed as the waitress shrugs helplessly. Perhaps Sakura healed the ninja from some life-threatening injury. Even now, not one of the trio has even turned to look their way. They do sort of seem familiar; he thinks he’s vaguely recognizing them from before his defection from Konoha.

For a moment, Sasuke turns his analytical pursuance to Sai in search of answers, but even his replacement’s normally expressionless face betrays some level of amusement; it seems as if they’re all in on an inside joke.

As Sakura carefully rids each wedge of juice, squeezing it into the beverage, he realizes the waitress is looking at him expectantly, at which he feels further nonplussed. There’s not really a menu fully within sight from here, and he doesn’t know much about alcohol; certainly he doesn’t know enough to be able to order something he might like off the top of his head with no options or descriptions to refer to. His focus switches to the lettering on the far wall, partially obscured by the booth wall and Naruto.

“Teme’ll have a…” Naruto’s voice trails off as he frowns. “Wait, what alcohol do you even like, anyways? Probably something strong!” The dobe’s focus turns to the waitress as he asks what her absolute strongest alcohol is, completely missing the withering look Sasuke shoots his way. He agreed to be here and drink something. He did not agree to the idiot shoving the most pungent and vile spirits in front of him all night; he’s had enough of throwing up for one day.

He glances at Sakura in pursuit of silent help as the waitress begins to list the establishment’s strongest available booze, things with strange names like kirakira and honokuni awamori and iichiko special shochu. Jade eyes search his for a long moment assessingly, as if she’s trying to decipher what his expression means.

“The kirakira is sweet, right? I think Hinata-chan had it once, so that’s a no-go.” It’s more of a shout on Naruto’s part than a thinking out loud voice, and it fades out again at Sasuke’s left as the dobe hums in thought.

Sakura blinks, expression suddenly understanding. She holds his gaze a second longer ahead of switching her attention to the waitress.

“Chimamire no geisha, please,” she partly yells to be heard over the ruckus of the crowd. “A little less rice wine than usual.” She gestures subtly towards the pink drink in front of her. “And I’ll get through this first before I order something.”

“Of course!” The waitress acquiesces, bowing slightly before she’s gone in a blink, parting through the small crowd of people with purpose. Following her departure, Sasuke looks at Sakura questioningly.

“What is that?” He asks in a low voice, barely loud enough for her to hear. She knows his taste well at this point, so he assumes it’s something that he’ll have a chance of liking, although he’s not much one for rice wine on its own; he knows from using it occasionally for cooking that it tends to lean sweet.

“Tomato juice,” Sakura responds faintly; the flecks of gold in her irises flash garnet amidst the lights glowing above them. “With lime juice and a dash of soy sauce.”

Ah. Not sweet, then. Sasuke nods once appreciatively, warmth pooling in his chest. He murmurs quietly, meant only for her ears, “Thank you.”

Her lips quirk upwards, and he thinks her cheeks flush faintly. It’s hard to tell underneath the red lighting as of yet.

“So, Sakura-chan!” Naruto perks up from his left, and whatever discreet spellbinding thing that was hovering in the charged air between he and Sakura dissipates. “How was work today?! Other than, uh…” His voice trails off, and the dobe scratches at his head nervously, clearly slowly realizing that perhaps it’s not the best conversation starter given he knocked two of Sasuke’s teeth out, creating extra work for her. “Other than, uh, putting teeth back, that is!”

He then squints at Sasuke for some reason, blue eyes glinting with suspicion.

“You did manage to put them back in, right, Sakura-chan?” The idiot questions, laughing nervously and focus switching from Sasuke to Sakura. “I uh, kinda forgot about it till now. Guess I should’ve asked?”

To his surprise, Sakura giggles, at which Naruto visibly relaxes.

“Yeah, I did,” she confirms, circling the straw around the concave of the glass prior to drawing it to her lips. There’s a long pause where she seems completely relaxed, eyes falling closed temporarily as if savoring the first sip of slush. “It was kinda busy most of the day; quite a few Genin who pushed training too far, or that’s what I gathered from the report, at least.”

Sai nods on Sakura’s other side as Sasuke contemplates; conceivably he was not the only thing that pulled her from her work today, though he also imagines that normal Genin training and sparring doesn’t often lead to major injuries or missing teeth.

He then wonders who was running the hospital back when they were all Genin before Tsunade, experiencing an acute few seconds of pity on their behalf. From what he gathers of Sakura's schedule, it’s a demanding occupation without orphaned and emotionally volatile children unleashing their most powerful ninjutsu on the roof.

“Yes,” his replacement says, drawing Sasuke from his thoughts and back to the ear-splitting mess that is this bar. “The training grounds have taken a beating. I am looking forward to their scenic views being restored soon.”

Sasuke takes that to mean that Sai enjoys drawing scenery in addition to nude women and… whatever else he must draw. Now that he’s reflecting on it, the training ground on the southwest edge of the village he and Sakura venture to from time to time is fairly scenic. Ino must like that one, too; when they ran into both kunoichi and ended up having lunch, they had been walking as if they came from that direction.

“Yeah, I imagine today is the last day of harsh training for a while for them,” Sakura confirms, smiling and resting her chin on one hand, elbow propped on the table again. “Their senseis will want them to be fresh for the trip and the exams.”

Naruto nods emphatically. “Yeah, that’s true. Kakashi warned them not to let their Genin push themselves too hard!”

Sasuke barely suppresses another snort, reflecting on the arduous process of learning Chidori, pushing his body to its absolute limits directly under their sensei’s supervision and tutelage.

“Gee, I wonder where he got that piece of wisdom from,” Sakura laughs ahead of a further sip of her drink. “Anyways, it was busy, but I missed most of it. Thank the gods for good staff; I managed to spend most of the day down in the lab and a bit at the clinic.”

Sai dips his chin once in acknowledgment, observing Sakura calculatingly.

“Have you managed to adequately adjust your bitchiness?” He then asks with a completely straight face, voice monotone yet curious as Sasuke frowns. Naruto cringes on his other side, though his expression is more one of fear on Sai’s behalf than disdain as it is on Sasuke’s part. That word doesn’t adequately describe anything Sakura does or is responsible for.

Bizarrely, Sakura laughs again. “Sort of,” she responds, waving her hand. “I’m working on it, anyway. My brain gets sort of fried after staring at empirical data for that long.”

“Soooo, it was a good thing that I knocked teme’s teeth out today, then!” Naruto surmises cheerfully and loudly, orotund shout nearly deafening Sasuke’s left eardrum as he unleashes a scowl towards the idiot’s side of the booth. “You gotta take a break every now and then, right?”

Before the retort has made it to Sasuke’s mouth, the waitress reappears holding a crimson beverage in a clear glass, ice cubes and a lime slice floating at the top. She slides it in front of Sasuke, smiling amicably, prior to slipping back without a word through the crowd in a hurry; he supposes the bar is pretty busy.

“Well…” Sakura hesitates from his right, almost utilizing an inside voice in comparison to the ridiculously cacophonous baritone Naruto employs. She then shrugs, smiling as she tilts her head to the side. “I haven’t been out with a group in a while, I guess. It’s a good way to unwind, now and then.”

Naruto nods emphatically, grinning before gulping down more of his alcohol. Sai simply smiles, but he, too, raises his can to take his own measured sip.

In the conversation’s lull, Sakura’s jade eyes find Sasuke’s, fulgurating to the drink and then back to him. There’s more than one unspoken message simmering amidst the lushly green verdant, and he gets the sense that she is somehow showing appreciation in his direction of all places. Possibly it's gratitude for dinner earlier, although she doesn’t need to thank him again for that; it’s the least he can do. Conversely, if she thinks she’ll be paying for his alcohol as some sort of quittance for the meal, she’ll have to think again.

There’s also an unspoken Aren’t you going to try it? So, carefully, he takes a sip, holding eye contact.

There’s something nearly savory about it, and obviously he likes the tomato juice. The lime makes it almost sour, disguising the taste of the rice wine remarkably well. It’s still leaning stronger than he would probably care for, but he can stretch out the process of consuming it slowly. If Naruto gets drunk enough, he might not notice that he’s only had one drink by the conclusion of this whole obstreperous debacle.

Not bad.

“...Not bad,” he murmurs, trying to saturate his voice with his thanks. She shoots him a glowing smile prior to raising her own glass to her mouth. He notices, once she pulls away, that her lips have left a rubicund imprint on the straw.

There are perhaps multiple things about this evening that are due to haunt him later.

“So, Traitor,” Sai begins, and Sasuke drags his stare away from the stain to the artist. “Do you intend to get plastered?”

Internally Sasuke heaves a lengthy sigh.

“Yeah!!” The idiot shouts as Sasuke responds, “No,” with a high degree of finality. This prompts Naruto to narrow his eyes at him, which Sasuke promptly ignores, taking another sip instead.

Chimamire no geisha. He’ll have to remember that. It beats choking down whatever disagreeable nonsense his dimwitted teammate would have shoved in front of him.

“I must admit I am confused,” Sai says after a moment, focus oscillating from Sasuke to Naruto. “Dickless made it sound as though you were to drink limitlessly.”

The artist deftly and effortlessly dodges the sandal thrown his way.

“STOP CALLING ME THAT!”

Sasuke sneaks a glance at Sakura and finds her looking rather amused as she watches the exchange. There’s something terribly fond in her expression as she takes another sip, almost like her very existence right now is tinged with nostalgia and cheer. He supposes it probably is. It’s not like they’ve really gone out like this as a team before to drink.

It’s… nice, to spend time all together, though he would prefer a less public activity. Sai is inordinately odd, difficult to read and awkward in speech, but he’s part of Team Seven. Sasuke would never admit it, but it’s been good to get to know him a bit better; it’s helped to enmesh him back into their lives more, to understand the dynamic that developed in his absence.

“Say, Sai, did you bring your hanafuda?” Sakura asks cheerfully after a tense moment is spent on Naruto’s part glaring at Sai while the artist himself remains firmly blank-faced, entirely devoid of emotion; clearly she’s trying to diffuse the tension.

Dark eyes flick to Sakura.

“I did,” his replacement remarks, reaching into his opposite pocket this time and pulling out a small stack of cards. “It is tradition. Should I deal?”

Sakura appraises Sasuke on her other side, then Naruto, whose eye is still twitching.

“Sure,” she says to Sai, turning back to him. “Hana-awase?”

Sai nods, and Naruto does, too, albeit begrudgingly, so the artist begins to expeditiously shuffle the cards.

As he deals, Sasuke lifts the cards as he receives them - apparently he’s supposed to play, too - and realizes they are handmade, though it would be difficult to tell until one touches them and can examine them. They’re made of thick paper, and he surmises the designs on them were created by way of an extraordinarily small brush and perhaps ink or watercolors, as they are exceptionally intricate. A clean, even black border surrounds each edge, and the cards are laden with intricate illustrations that also contain the occasional elegantly painted kanji phrasing.

All in all, he is dealt five cards, each containing detailed illustrations that would require a large amount of expert dexterity. Sai made them himself, he concludes as he studies them transiently: he’s been given the camp curtain card of March, the boar of July surrounded by bush clover, a September card featuring a blooming chrysanthemum, an October card that depicts lackadaisically falling maple leaves, and a December card with dark foxglove tree sprouts.

“New set,” Sakura offers in Sai’s direction, her tone endowing it as a compliment as she sorts her own cards, angled marginally away from him. “Very pretty.”

A genuine smile slowly unfurls on his replacement’s face.

“Thank you, Ugly. I made it recently. I was in need of practicing my fine detail skills and calligraphy once more.

Sasuke is of the opinion that it looks less like practice and more like the work of a master, finely tuned swishes of black ink kanji and meticulous linework, but he supposes being critical of one’s own skills crosses over to the world of art.

He vaguely knows the rules for hana-awase despite never having played it himself. Many of the people working under Orochimaru when he was in Sound made use of hanafuda decks and card games to pass the hours. There were several periods of time that required maintaining a low profile as various experiments and plans were carried out. He dislikes reflecting on that time, as being stuck underground tended to put him on edge, but he did observe many card games there from afar that he never ascertained from his younger years, given he spent most of them either a little too young to fully understand card games or too focused on revenge to spend that much time sitting still.

Sasuke plays quietly, using the game as a distraction to his advantage in terms of blocking out the loud noise of the bar. Though hana-awase is often a game of luck, it seems Sakura is particularly good at it and, as promised by a conversation regarding table games a while ago, Naruto is terrible. They play through a full round in which the idiot is decimated by all three of them before Sakura finishes her drink and, laughing, orders another, at which time he learns that it’s called a strawberry daiquiri. Whatever ingredients it’s made of - plenty of sugar, surely, he expects, mouth twitching in amusement - he thinks it’s fitting that that’s what she likes.

He himself sips on his own beverage lethargically, growing accustomed to the taste. That is, until Naruto complains that he’s drinking too slowly at this rate, at which Sasuke promptly begins consuming it even more languidly just to irk him.

It’s not so bad, once he gets mentally past all the noise and commotion. The alcohol mellows him as it has in his limited past experience, to the extent that he loses an iota of his usual discomfort with social activities and relaxes a little.

“Sakura-chaaaaaaaaaaaaan,” the idiot whines loudly from his left upon his third defeat of the evening, just as Sasuke finally and unfortunately arrives at the bottom of his glass. “Can we play a different game? This one’s no fair.”

“You losing doesn’t automatically mean it’s unfair,” Sasuke states, not glancing up to see the dobe’s indignation as he gathers his own cards, prompting a feminine giggle from his right that he rather enjoys. When he looks, sliding his stacked cards to the center of the table, he sees Sakura has polished off her third strawberry daiquiri.

“You’re such a bastard-”

Sasuke rolls his eyes.

“-Y’know, you’ve barely even finished one drink! It’s not fair!” Naruto shoves the upper portion of Sasuke’s left shoulder. It’s not a true push; moreso, it’s half-hearted, reminiscent of the bickering they used to get into on missions as kids.

It’s still enough of a push, however, to have his good arm make fleeting contact with Sakura’s.

He allows it to linger there longer than is strictly necessary, insides twisting pleasantly when she makes approximately zero effort to pull herself out of shared space this time. In fact, he thinks she leans a little towards him for a compendiary swoop, though it’s subtle to the extent that no one who’s further than a drink deep would notice.

“We could do a koi-koi tournament?” Sakura interjects jocosely on his other side once he finally eases back into his own space; he hears her swirling the straw in her glass. When he turns, her cheeks are edging more pink than fluorescent crimson, clearly not a by-product of the lighting this time.

“What- ever! ” Naruto gripes, grumbling under his breath something along the lines of you’re no fun and briefly glaring at his half-full cup.

The waitress reappears to take their empty glasses as well as Sai’s empty can, and Sakura slides both hers and his own across the table so they’re easier for her to reach.

“Another, please,” Sai says calmly, not sounding inebriated in the slightest.

“Yuzushu lemonade,” Sakura orders next - also a fitting choice for her, Sasuke thinks - at which point the waitress nods and then waits politely, regarding Sasuke.

Slowly Sasuke exhales, frowning and wondering if he’s going to regret this.

“...Chimamire no geisha,” he ultimately requests, brows knitting together at the way Naruto whoops at his left; he tries not to roll his eyes this time given the waitress is still there. “Same as before.”

It’ll get the idiot off his case for a bit, and two drinks really isn’t that much alcohol, anyways.

The waitress flits away back into the crowd, returning roughly five minutes later to deliver their order; Sakura is well into a match of koi-koi against Naruto by then, fluorescence causing the paper of the homemade cards to catch the color of a salmon’s scale when they’re turned at a certain angle.

Upon her victory, Sasuke promptly finds himself engaged in his own match against Sai. It’s lengthy by nature of the luck of the draw, though he’ll admit Sai is an apt challenge; he’s beginning to suspect that Sakura’s tenacity in board games has gained at least some level of practice from repeated matches against his replacement. Perhaps he’ll ask him at some point; if he enjoys cards, it would stand to reason that he could be well-versed in board games, too.

Ultimately Sasuke loses - “Ahahaha, in your face , teme!” to which he responds, “You lost, too, Usuratonkachi,” - but it’s not without putting up a good fight. He sips unhurriedly on his drink, after, allowing it to dull his senses the tiniest smidgen more. It’s still not enough to be properly drunk, but it’s plenty to relax him a little, to lessen the sharp edge of the clamorous bar’s volume.

Sakura makes her way through the spiked lemonade, the lemon wedge floating at the top of the glass gradually sinking to the bottom. She orders another about halfway through her match against Sai, progressively getting increasingly sprightly as the game progresses.

“Guess I lose,” Sakura relents finally as they finish tallying the latest round of points and Sai’s victory becomes clear via way of the sake card and an extra ten added to his score. She doesn’t sound the least bit chafed by it. In fact, it’s rather the opposite; there’s a permanent grin affixed to her face, a lazy sort of smile and slightly dilated pupils swimming in green-red fluorescent shift. She catches and holds his gaze once deliberately, cheeks flushing as Sai shuffles the cards back together and returns them to their place in his pocket.

The maundering about anything and everything continues for the better part of another hour; Naruto leads the conversation, though Sakura definitely helps and Sai interjects to add something every now and then. There’s talk about a woman someone named Yamato is dating, on which Sakura extrapolates, because apparently she knows her, a surveyor by trade who helped with property lines when they expanded the clinic. This in turn leads to Naruto going on a grating twenty minute tirade regarding an old land dispute he had to sit through alongside Kakashi, complete with overly exaggerated impersonations and intermittent pauses to gulp hefty sips of his newest liquor, some concoction that had a ridiculous name like Bunraku Barrage.

“I thought they’d NEVER shut up! I had a whole page where I was supposed to take notes that I filled with drawings of little toads by the end of it ‘cause they just kept sayin’ the same stuff over and over, and I told Hinata-chan after that-”

“I did not know you knew how to draw, Dickless. I would like to see your work-”

The dobe’s response is to scowl in offense, dig drink-sticky ice cubes out of his drink, and fling them at his replacement one by one in successive order as Sakura tries to hold back a tipsy chuckle next to him.

Sasuke listens more than he participates, though he would be hard-pressed to say he isn’t sort of enjoying himself, given he’s arrived at several rather obvious conclusions as his teammates all grow increasingly inebriated. Said conclusions are like most things he thinks, in that he keeps the thoughts to himself.

Naruto is the loud, lightweight type of drunk, carousing with grand merriment and even more conviction than usual, although Sasuke reasons that the loud portion of that assessment isn’t really a change from his base personality. Sai is moreso the type who outwardly doesn’t betray much of a change, other than a slightly delayed reaction time and occasionally interrupting whoever’s speaking rather than waiting for them to finish whatever they were saying.

But Sakura?

Sakura is cute when she's been drinking.

Her green eyes spark with easy, unrestrained joy, and she seems to find the most innocuous things funny, though she’s still adroit in terms of reaction time and interjecting into the flow of conversation when appropriate. Her pupils dilate unrestrainedly when she looks at him, as if to assess his reaction to something that Naruto and Sai said, more open in that she’s not hiding the fact that she wants to know what he’s thinking. Her cheeks flush, too, darker than her hair, and one of the lace straps of her dress keeps slipping the tiniest bit off her shoulder.

It’s her mouth that distracts him most of all. A lazy grin has been firmly planted on her face for the better portion of the last hour, and her lips are still kind of shiny despite having gone through several glasses and leaving lipstick marks on each one. It’s enough to make him ignore the noise, ignore the dobe’s taunting, because she’s within arm’s length and less, with no sign of any desire to exit his proximity. In fact, it’s quite the opposite; he’s fairly certain she’s at least three inches closer to him than she was when they initially sat down.

She’s clearly enjoying herself - it’s possible that she’s been working too hard lately, and thus perhaps she needed a night out - so he’ll begrudgingly inwardly admit that he’s enjoying it, too.

Now if he could just get out of nursing any further alcohol. He doesn’t want to push it; a small loosening of his tongue is plenty ample for tonight.

It’s not until Sasuke drains the last bit of his second chimamire no geisha that the dobe’s focus eases off of Sai; apparently he’s run out of ice cubes.

“Finally! I thought you’d never finish that thing!” The dobe’s speech is more sluggish than it usually is, signifying that the alcohol has begun to stake greater effect. He turns, comically slowly, in the direction of the waitress, currently milling in between the center tables.

“HEY, CAN I ORDER A BARRAGE FOR MY FRIEND HERE-”

“I’m not drinking that,” Sasuke deadpans, frowning. He would say something, but judging by the waitress’s reaction, she didn’t even comprehend the idiot’s asininely slurred speech with all of the noise encumbering the words.

“Awwww, teme, why not?!” Naruto bemoans, shaking the small amount of liquid left at the bottom of his glass prior to draining it. He wipes his mouth with approximately zero courtesy, after. “I’ll even drink another one with you! You said you’d driiiiiink.”

“Yes,” Sasuke asseverates, betraying no enthusiasm and gesturing to his empty glass. “And I did.”

“Two drinks barely count-”

Again, perhaps Naruto has matured in that he is more perceptive than he used to be.

“You never specified a quota, Dead Last,” Sasuke counters.

“Pssh.” Naruto waves his hand flippantly and attempts to roll his eyes, although it seems as if the prospect is making him dizzy. “You gotta lighten up a little, teme. What are you gon’ do after this anyways? Decipher more scrolls since you’re so good at them?”

It is then that an entirely amusing idea occurs to him, and he latches onto it as an easy way out of this situation.

It could work… if Sakura plays along.

More pertinently, it’ll annoy Naruto.

"No," he murmurs, barely audible over the clamor of the bar and working hard to contain his smirk, lest he completely give himself away. It’s hardest when he lets his gaze temporarily flicker calculatedly to hers prior to landing back on their idiot teammate. "I’m walking Sakura home."

It only takes a second before Sakura’s grinning up at him in his peripheral vision, nimble-witted no matter what. In turn, Naruto immediately glares at him, seeing straight through the ruse. Sai just regards the three of them blankly.

"Nuh-uh! No way are you getting out of it this easily!" The dobe frowns ahead of adding, "Besides, Sakura-chan's even more of a menace when she's been drinking! One time she punched me so hard when we were getting wasted with Granny Tsunade, I had internal bleeding!"

“I remember that,” Sai vocalizes.

"It's true," Sakura giggles ahead of taking another sip. At first he's not sure which statement she's referring to. A long pause passes in which Sasuke, Naruto, and Sai all look at her anticipatorily.

Ultimately, her attention lands on Sasuke, gears briefly turning as she silently assesses what he’s really after: an accomplice to rescue him from the grim fate of having to consume a copy of whatever that poisoned monstrosity in the dobe’s hand is. As Sakura grins conspiratorially, her cheeks somehow flush darker.

“I’d like some company,” she reveals with a convincing show of agreement, though the set of her mouth strongly implies that she’s trying not to laugh. “Who knows what kinds of unsavory characters could be lurking about?"

It is so utterly Sakura to still use a word like unsavory when she's been drinking, Sasuke mulls, stifling a snort of amusement. Naruto groans animatedly on his other side, sounding utterly defeated even as he continues to bitch.

“You think I buy that for a second, Sakura-chan? Or should I say Three Second Haruno?!”

Sasuke is too distracted by Sakura meeting his eyes again, smirking brazenly, to even throw a gloating glance in the dobe’s direction.

And suddenly, a deluge is torrenting the roof.

Sasuke is the least inebriated of all of them, so he notices it first. It doesn’t ease into it at all, really; there’s just a crash of roaring pitter patters suddenly there, torrenting from above as if vengeful gods have just rather unceremoniously thrown out their bathwater across all of Konoha.

It doesn’t stop, however, and Sakura’s the next to notice, chin barreling upwards at the noise. She beholds the ceiling and its dissonance, long pale pink lashes glowing strangely ruby against the fluorescence, though she doesn’t say anything.

“Strong rain,” Sai comments in a monotone voice, drawing Sasuke’s focus away from Sakura and the way her lips have fallen open; the artist is draining the remaining alcohol from his can by the time Sasuke looks further right. “I suppose that is a sign that this evening must end.”

“Eh?” Naruto asks as he nearly drops his glass, clearly straining to listen. “Rain?”

Sasuke twitches, because he really is one of the least observant ninja he’s ever been around. Even some of the civilians milling about paused in their guzzling prior to his idiot best friend did.

That thought is punctuated by a raucous boom of thunder.

"Shit," Naruto mutters, rising suddenly and nearly falling over woozily; it takes him a moment to recollect his balance before he begins to dig in his pockets for his wallet.

"I didn't know it was 'bout to storm… I gotta get home. Hinata-chan hates ‘em!"

While Sasuke was unaware that nineteen or twenty something Hinata is fearful of storms, he’ll admit it’s a little endearing, the speed at which the dobe slams down enough money to cover his drinks and then some and is the first to speed out of the bar, shouting, “Bye, Sakura-chan, Sai, teme!” The term besotted newlyweds comes to mind; as with the majority of Kakashi’s lackadaisical descriptions and understanding of things, it’s apt.

Sai pushes his now empty can to the center of the table with one hand as he retrieves money from his wallet via his other. “I will be going then, too. I expect Beautiful will want me home.” His replacement shoots them both an unusual smile as he rises, pulling the custom scroll Sasuke recognizes as the one the artist utilizes for his signature ninjutsu.

Sasuke frowns, confused, but all becomes clear as Sai makes a short sweep of his brush and a rudimentary umbrella pops into existence via the manipulation of a very small amount of chakra.

“This outing was most entertaining,” the artist comments, stowing his supplies in advance of gripping the handle of the sketched umbrella. “I will see you later, Ugly, Traitor.” He then proceeds to turn, rather unsteadily; he must be more drunk than he appears, although now that Sasuke is reflecting, he doesn’t think the artist went through too many cans of chu-hai.

And so Sai is parting through the crowd and out the door in short order, too, just in time for a crash of thunder to echo through the streets. It’s enough to quiet the few remaining patrons in the bar who were too drunk to hearken the sound of the torrent smattering atop the roof. Quite a few of them are suddenly digging through their own pockets for wallets now.

“Sounds like quite a storm,” Sakura comments as another crash of thunder echoes above Konoha. When Sasuke turns back to her, he sees one of the straps of her dress has slipped off her shoulder again.

“...Yeah,” he manages absentmindedly, eventually tugging his gaze away long enough to reach for money from his own pocket. It probably would be wise to get Sakura home before the rest of the storm rolls in; it sounds as if it won’t be a particularly pleasant one. He knows she’s plenty capable of making it home on her own, but he wants to make sure.

When she shifts slightly, moving to reach into her own pockets, he realizes she’s getting out her own money to pay, so he nudges her gently with his elbow.

“I’ve got it,” he murmurs at a volume that only she will hear.

A dark, rich blush inches its way across her face.

“I…” Her voice trails off, and he bites the inside of his lip subtly to prevent it from twitching upwards.

“You don’t have to,” she finally says as he lays enough on the table for a rough estimate of both their drinks and a sizable tip, faintly unfocused green eyes following the payment. “You already got dinner.”

In lieu of responding to that, Sasuke simply begins to shift out of the booth to rise, shooting her an amused look that’s also tinged with a suggestion to get her home: Aren’t you coming?

At first he expects she’s going to argue, but as the gears turn, something in her expression subsides. A smile ekes onto her features, and she averts her eyes momentarily.

“...Thank you,” she expresses finally, rising and meeting his gaze afresh and appreciatively, though still accompanied by the dark blush.

Sasuke simply nods, searching the shifting crowd of people for the easiest path out of the building. It’s easier than when they came in; quite a few people have made their escape out the door already, barreling down the street at the lagging speed civilians tend to have given they use no chakra to aid. Sakura lingers close behind him, following him to the door. A civilian jumps back hastily when they see Sasuke, a lingering expression of fear on his face, at which Sasuke frowns but tries not to react.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?” He catches Sakura saying once they’re three people away from the door, at which he turns to her abruptly. “We could-”

“I’m still walking you home,” he tells her huskily, throwing her a meaningful look and quiet so as not to be heard by the majority of people within earshot. “...If you’d like.”

There is a lengthy silence, or, rather, as much silence as there can be in a semi-crowded bar, but her soft features bit by bit morph into a smile.

“Okay,” she agrees as they finally get to the door and another round of thunder barrages the sky. Sasuke sees the corresponding lightning explode across the firmament through the open door in front of them, this time. Thick raindrops are collecting in the streets, and puddles have already begun forming in the crevices of the road.

“Probably won’t be much of a walk,” Sakura jokes as the streak of gold subsides, grinning, at which Sasuke nods.

They tear through the caliginous streets in a grayed blur. Sasuke doesn’t quite make it up to full speed, as he wants to keep pace with her, but Sakura is also a bit speedier than he remembers her being, even while intoxicated. The street lamps are all lit by now, the lights bleeding into the refractory of raindrops and obscured architecture. Lightning lacerates the horizon twice more along the way, although there’s nothing directly overhead as of yet that carries urgent danger.

Were they not capable ninja with speed as their aid, they would be more than damp by the point at which they make it to her apartment building. It’s the first monsoon of the season, sudden and intense rainfall soddening civilization; thick raindrops trail their way down the mirk and brick and wood of each building, flow down every shimmering leaf in each garden, and collect determinedly in the diminutive pooling concaves of the road.

Sakura’s pink hair clings to her neck with moisture once they’re finally inside her complex, dulled dusty rose in the darkness, and Sasuke finds himself thinking he’s glad, actually, that it’s the middle of the night, because he’s pretty sure her dress is clinging a little tightly to her skin, too, and were he to view it with the aid of broad daylight, he…

Well, it’s better not to dwell on it.

A boom of thunder that sounds closer than the previous handful resounds behind them as Sasuke pulls the complex door shut. There’s a subtle sound of raindrops dripping off of both of them, quietly plunking atop the concrete flooring before quickly expanding and subsiding. He can barely see the small watermarks they leave in the lack of light; none of her neighbors appear to be up, no luminosity emanating from beneath their doorways.

Briefly, there’s a look of worry on Sakura’s feminine face as her eyes flip upwards to the bay window, clearly in response to the roar rattling the clouds; her shoulders straighten at the sound. When the last clap fades, Sakura settles and makes for the metal stairway, casting a cursory glance behind her as if this time she’s the one asking Are you coming?

So he does, hand settling into his pocket and trailing behind her.

“That thunder sounds kind of close,” she voices in a hushed tone as she pulls her key from her pocket, clicking it into the lock and turning. It catches, clean and smooth. “I hope it doesn’t hit any of the electricity supply. The rain’s good, but… Well. I guess the hospital has a generator. Two, actually. Should be fine.”

Ah. It makes sense she’s worried about that. Despite the influence of a few drinks, she remains the levelheaded and cognitional woman he knows well, concerned for the wellbeing of others to the nth degree and sharp as a tack. Sasuke nods in agreement absentmindedly as his fingers close around his own copy of her apartment key, feeling the worn metal against his digits and tearing his gaze away from the damp fabric at the small of her back to the pastiche of pots that adorn her entryway. All of her plants appear recently watered, he notes, soil still dampened to a darker loam; she must have watered them before meeting earlier.

Sakura passes through the sage green door, and Sasuke trails behind her inside, closing it behind them both. He would like to say goodnight to her prior to leaving, but he also doesn’t wish to drip water all over her floors, so he lingers on the mat as Sakura removes her shoes, thus far betraying no change in balance despite her moderate insobriety. Another detonation of storm rips through the darkened building as she does so, louder than the one afore; it causes her shoulders to stiffen upwards just so once again. His head angles, trained on the sound as a frown inscribes itself onto his mouth.

It's not as if he hasn't weathered worse storms - he has, many times - but he doesn’t particularly enjoy being without cover when close lightning is involved due to its unpredictability. He supposes it will only be for a few minutes at maximum, though, and a building with electricity is much preferred to the nearest damp stalagmite-laden caves or dilapidated abandoned buildings he sought shelter in while on his journey.

“How long do you think it’ll keep up?” Sakura asks with a searching expression, drawing him from his ponderings back to her entryway. She carefully nudges her shoes onto the rug with bare feet, albeit not looking at them as she does so; she’s regarding him casually instead, arms crossed as if she’s thinking. A more subtle crackle of thunder punctuates the air just then, and Sasuke shrugs, looking determinedly away from the semi-transparent lace strap that’s lolling off her shoulder. She hasn’t turned the lamp on, so it’s dark, but not dark enough that he can’t still see the way the dampened fabric is clinging to her skin.

“...Could be a while,” he observes, straining to listen, to hear if the deluge has let up even in the slightest, but it hasn’t. The droplets are comparable to a symphony composed entirely of percussion, a firm and overwhelming beat pummeling above their heads. “First monsoon of the season.”

Sakura nods, pupils a little unfocused as if she’s considering his hypothesis but the alcohol is acting as a buffer to obscure whatever problem she’s working through in her head.

Briefly her gaze falls to his feet, and her face communicates befuddlement; he assumes it’s confusion as to why his shoes are on. He’s struck for the second time tonight that Sakura is endearingly cute when she’s been drinking. Perhaps she’s failed to note it’s well past midnight.

And then Sakura, without falter, softly speaks into the swathes of silken gray coating them both here, enunciating each syllable completely clearly and betraying not an ounce of intemperance.

“You should sleep here.”

It takes him a moment to fully process it, sinking into his being agnate the stentorian drizzle over their heads and saturing him with the complicated tonic of internal conflict. The sandals around his feet suddenly feel as if they’re cemented to the rug, rooted in the boundary of the threshold and indecision.

It’s absolutely nothing to do with her and everything to do with his tendency for disturbed sleep, the nightmare that gripped him the night previous. It’s a one in three chance minimum, and there are periods where multiple days of them run together, so there’s no guarantee he won’t be besieged tonight merely because he was last night.

That cannot happen here, although he would very much like to stay at Sakura’s apartment, and he cherishes the offer. He knows, albeit the fact that she’s at least a little drunk, that she’s being kind, concerned for his well-being.

But he can’t.

Unless…

“...The couch?” He asks quietly, finally, after the seconds have paralleled years given their slowness in crawling by. It wouldn’t be so formidable a thing, then. If he wakes, he could read one of the books from her shelf and possibly make her an early breakfast. If it’s a really bad one, he could easily flit back to his own apartment prior to her waking.

But Sakura’s lips pull into a frown, fine pink brows knotting together.

“Of course not. My bed is…”

Big enough for two, he finishes internally for her as her voice trails off, feeling both elated and wretched.

She really does trust him enough for that: shared sleep, close proximity, and the like. He’s slept near her before, sure - missions necessitate it - but never that close. Never beneath the same blanket.

And he has to turn her down.

Sakura’s cheeks are growing darker by the second, scarlet stained into the dark warm gray of the hour, as if she’s just realized what her words could imply, despite the fact he knows she’s just talking about sleeping.

"Um, I just meant- Well, I-" She fidgets, biting her lip and fingers twitching at her sides. "To sleep. Just sleep. If you want. Since it's storming. And… well, the lightning."

She says that often, he realizes. If you want. Doesn't she know that she is all he wants? That she has just offered him something that he badly wants? Something that he contemplates nearly every night despite his knowledge of the fact that it would only serve to unjustly burden her?

Hesitation claws at his windpipe dutifully even as a clashing something twists pleasantly behind his ribcage; he thinks it’s his heart, ramified with vines overtaking superannuated brick, urging him to say yes. And then feelings are off to war in his throat, arrows flung and trebuchets loosing blows of logic against his traitorous tongue that wants nothing more than to agree.

It is in the midst of that battle - in his lack of response, the mangling of hesitance at his possibility of being unduly exposed - that he watches Sakura's expression flash with hurt.

"Um." Sakura shifts her gaze to the floor, and everything in him plummets along with it in alarm, like lead has been poured into his chest cavity just prior to being pushed off a steep cliff. It reminds him of the looks she used to give him when they were Genin and he said something that deeply disappointed her, shoulders shrinking in as if to barricade herself off from him as her smile faded. Or worse, just after the war when she'd been eerily silent in his presence the first few days, as if her feelings needed biting her tongue or pulling a mask over them, as if her love was some kind of grand burden on him, as if she hadn’t just saved him from bleeding out after he cast the most categorically, conclusively cruel genjutsu on her-

Say something.

"Never mind. Sorry, Sasuke-kun. Uh-"

Corrosion, you craven idiot.

"Thank you for walking me. I'll see you… tomorrow?" Sakura is not looking at him, and any kind of overture she's offered to him is shrinking back as quickly as it came, sure to be kept close to the vest for the foreseeable future and then some; this will resemble a rejection to her, like he doesn’t want her close, when that’s not it; it’s just-

Her eyes are crestfallen and shiny, he realizes. Despite the crepuscule and ataxia the storm is providing, Sasuke has excellent eyesight; blatant tears are conspicuously pricking atop jade skewed gray, barely held in check by her eyelashes and willpower.

Speak up.

"Or… maybe later this week, if..? Well, if you have… other things to do."

Sasuke is tired of many things, but above all, he is tired of being a coward, of his tendency to decathect, of making Sakura cry.

Her eyes are shiny-

"I'm really sorry, Sasuke-kun. I didn't mean to overstep… Or to… Well, I didn't mean to push you. I just meant-"

When he finally manages to wrench his tongue away from hesitance - I just won’t sleep , he reasons - he says possibly the stupidest thing he could, the first thing to come to mind, though he supposes the day sort of began with teeth.

"I don't have a toothbrush."

It’s accented by additional raindrops sliding down the roof, as if they are an accompanying drumroll to emphasize his statement’s imbecility.

Sakura studies him for a long moment as if processing, and it makes him wonder if the damage is already done, if he's already rived and ruined things. Her eyes are still shiny; she blinks several times to clear them.

Were it a fleeting offer, he supposes it provides her an out, though there's a beast, desperately trying to claw its way out of the fissure that is his chest and into his throat, that shrivels at that prospect, hurts in a way that makes his own vision blur for a second, then two.

"I have extra," she ultimately responds softly, happily, tone audibly relieved and her lips pulling upward into a breathtaking smile. "You can have one."

So, slowly, carefully, Sasuke removes his sandals, placing them neatly on the rug prior to trailing after Sakura to her bathroom. She flips the light on before kneeling to the height of the cupboard below the sink, from which she pulls a small package of two remaining unused toothbrushes.

“I usually buy the bigger pack and just use them over time,” she explains, rising to her feet and turning to him with a pale purple one in hand. It’s remarkably similar in color to her dress now that it’s damp.

Yes, the dress is very… damp.

It is at this point that he locks his vision firmly on Sakura’s face, which is flushed red as a cherry; he gathers that she has perhaps glimpsed herself in the mirror with the lights on.

“I’m… going to go change quick… Er, if you want to brush your teeth first?”

Sasuke nods, and she presses the lavender toothbrush into his hand prior to, thankfully, flitting out of the room.

Brushing his teeth seems to happen in a blur, existence seemingly slowing and quickening all at once in tempo with the spate of precipitation as well as another brawl of thunder. He brushes his teeth as if on clumsy autopilot, movement of the bristles slow and uncharacteristically disorderly.

It doesn’t take long for Sakura’s bedroom door to click open again. She emerges clad in a dark, blessedly dry pair of shorts and a loose fitting shirt somewhere between gray and pistachio green; he sees it clearly in the mirror’s reflection, right as he’s staring at the countertop cup that contains her own toothbrush, wondering if he should put the one he’s just used there.

She deposits the dress, folded neatly atop her arm, in the laundry room at the apex of the hall before making her return to the bathroom. Her smile is sheepish as she grabs her own toothbrush and stakes a place next to him in front of the mirror, reaching for the toothpaste.

It’s strange, to see both himself and her, side by side in the mirror. Their height difference is further pronounced than he thought, he reflects. The difference in their coloring is more apparent, too; his dark hair and lone visible murky eye are sharp in contrast to her pale skin, her lighter irises and the slightly damp pink hair still clinging to her neck.

Sakura has just begun her brushing, gaze meeting his in the mirror, when his eyes drop to the toothbrush in his hand, rinsed clean already, in silent question. Dark pupils assess him for a moment, then flash to the cup where she stores her own toothbrush in silent answer, lips quirking upward encouragingly.

He exhales a slow breath he didn’t realize he was holding prior to placing it there. He then waits, taking a step back from the immediate area of the sink, not wanting to crowd her there but also not wanting to enter her bedroom without her.

Her own motions smooth and unencumbered by the evening’s activities, Sasuke observes that Sakura brushes her teeth thoroughly and methodically now. On missions when they were younger, Sasuke always spent the longest of any of them on the task. Naruto rarely brushed his at all until Kakashi started forcibly shoving a toothbrush in his hand anytime they were somewhere overnight. Sakura always fell somewhere in the middle; she always brushed her teeth, but perhaps could have spent a little longer at it on certain occasions. He supposes multiple cavities probably inspired her to take greater care for the action, over the years.

She’s still smiling after she’s finished up, like the grin is permanently etched into the set of her mouth.

"Which side do you like?" She asks the question softly, kind as ever as he trails behind her into her bedroom.

"Left," he manages to say quietly, albeit a bit absentmindedly as he wrenches his head away from the uchiwa fan across the room, still displayed prominently atop her vanity. Despite the hammering of the rain, it somehow also seems quiet enough here for one to hear a pin drop, the air laced with something that feels much the same as anticipation to him.

Sakura nods, grinning as if pleased with this information and not seeming to notice his prior preoccupation. He's pretty sure she prefers the right side; her book, the same one as the first occasion he’d seen her bedroom, still rests on the end table placed at the right of the bed, and that is the side with the lamp currently switched on. She proceeds forward to prehend her place, beginning to pull back the blankets and sheet.

He carefully follows her lead, carving a slow pace to the opposite side, intent on mirroring her actions. Her sheets are lavender, too, he sees now, though perhaps they’re a slightly brighter shade than her comforter; they match the pillowcases. He stares at them a moment, so unlike his own bedding and thinking on their visage of opposites even here. He himself always chooses dark colors as they weather the longest.

Sakura settles on the far end of the bed, closer to the edge than the center, enough so that there’s acutely defined space between them. He’s sure that it’s on his behalf, giving him plenty of space with which to reconcile his boundaries.

Even still, there’s a crossing of some metaphorical threshold here, ill defined on pale lilac fabric pulled immaculately smooth as of yet on his end. A few hairs at his nape are standing on end in anticipation.

Sasuke tentatively meets her eyes, already looking at him and desaturated from being backlit. It’s possibly the softest expression he has ever seen Sakura wear; it steals his breath, makes it feel like the air is heavy yet warmer in his lungs.

Slow as molasses slides down the concave of an upturned jar, he takes his invited place, leaving the clean unblemished boundary in the middle. He takes up more space in the bed than she does, he realizes, feet creating an indent beneath the blankets at the foot of the bed that briefly catches his attention.

The blankets rustle, and his focus drags away from their feet - her own are pretty small, he notes at the motion - and to Sakura’s craned torso, twisting to flip off the lamp.

As she does so, the spine of the book on her bedside table lingers briefly within view, just to the left of her shoulder from his vantage point. It reads An Introduction to Electrocardiography.

Sasuke nearly snorts for two reasons.

One, amusement, because of course Sakura would house, of all things, a well-worn medical text at her bedside. He’s not sure if it’s to assist herself in falling asleep at times or because she genuinely finds it that interesting of a read. Either option greatly entertains him.

Two, he’s not sure what exactly electrocardiography is, but he recognizes the cardi prefix as having something to do with the heart. Fitting, he thinks; his own feels rather like it may beat out of his chest currently, if he continues to allow his whirlwind of thoughts to careen out of check. It feels rather as if someone has come into the hallways of his mind and rearranged all of the boxes he typically keeps shoved out of sight for safekeeping.

She reaches the switch in short order and the world plunges into low saturation, shades of gray and subtle violet or green.

He lays his head back on the pillow as she does the same, gaze affixed to her ceiling for now. He’s not sure if it would be weird to turn to look at her again, although he wants to. He contents himself with other observations instead as they listen to the rain, straining for visuals or his other senses to make sense of the present and trying greatly to leave the past in the past.

Her comforter is thicker than his, he notices first; it makes it warmer beneath the blankets, a suitable subsidy for a night like tonight. His focus wanders to where the ceiling meets the wall, examining it: there’s a thin layer of mortar line, a remnant of the cruder tools utilized to construct buildings that have been abandoned for newer methods. His own apartment building has it, too, small flaws here and there, reflecting skilled work accomplished with obsolete apparati.

“Did you run into many storms like this?” Sakura surprises him by asking quietly, tone barely hovering above a whisper yet easy to hear above the din when he’s this close to her. “When… Well, when you were away, I mean.”

“...A few,” he responds after a moment of pondering, reflecting on the multitude of squalls and tempests he encountered while on his journey. Depending on the climate of the locale, it varied from simple thunderstorms to the more dangerous monsoons, and on one occasion he had to leave the coast rather quickly due to an approaching irate hurricane.

Another cannonade resounds, reverberating against every building; a flash of lightning accompanies it across the sky, briefly illuminating the balcony entranceway and the windows in the pitch. He apprehends, finally, that, while this storm is certainly loud and all-consuming, it doesn’t feel… fractious.

In fact, it reminds him of-

“I remember…”

Sasuke angles his head her way slightly, tilted left atop the pillow and in a climacteric search for distraction. He can make out her side profile, button nose and curved mouth and the barest hint of splayed lashes.

It grounds him, a stable tether to the present with a lot of slack, should he want it.

“...I remember, you wrote a letter from the Land of Woods.”

Sasuke blinks.

“You said the thunder sounded different there,” she murmurs softly. He watches her lips move, the subtle way the outline changes as she switches between vowels and consonants. “In the forest, I mean. You said it… echoes longer through the trees, if you listen. No buildings to bounce off of.”

His brows arch a little upwards, surprised she remembers that. He’d found a cave for the evening, tiny and cramped and not very deep. It was shelter, but he barely fit beneath that particular bedrock; it had given him a front row seat to the clashing concerto of pealing lightning streaking across the arching sky. The wind was mighty, too, a sad hymn of anguished autumn whipping the sonance around. Luckily it had come from the direction of the back of the cave, which put him out of the worst of the blustering November chill.

He’d listened to it for some time, watching the dark clouds roll across the sky and mother nature stake her dominion. It had sounded different, though, noises swishing through pine needles and crunching leaves rather than the more organized din of storms rushing through coordinated streets and roofs all roughly of a similar height. Sasuke had recorded his thoughts in a letter to her, one he hesitated to send, wondering if she’d find it tedious. It’s not like a storm is the most interesting thing in the world.

But she always responded to his letters, quickly and kindly - he was nearly a year into his journey at that point, their correspondence a familiar routine that felt as much needed to him as water or food - so he’d sent it anyways. Sure enough, her response had been positive; she’d said something along the lines of wanting to experience such a storm in the woods someday, far from civilization.

The bedding rustles slightly, and he realizes Sakura is turning to lie on her side, to face him. He finds himself emulating the action, shifting to rest on his left side as if his body is acting on its own accord. Although it hasn’t yet progressed to pain, the action makes his stump twinge a bit again until he’s shifted his weight off of it.

There’s still a divide between them, a place where the blanket cleaves to rest against the mattress rather than bodies, clearly delineating the boundary.

“Thank you. For the letters, I mean,” Sakura says softly, articulation emblazoned with authenticity. It’s a gift to look at her more fully here. Her hair cascades off her pillow now, neatly melting into the pillowcase, and her eyes, her entire countenance, really, is gentle something that he thinks he recognizes but would struggle to voice.

“You really have… Well, I mean. The way you described it was-”

Whatever she was about to say lingers in her throat, unspoken as she’s interrupted by a boom of thunder so loud that Sasuke deduces the storm must now be directly overhead. Her eyes widen, and her focus leaves him to study the ceiling, following the sound with concern as resplendent lightning flashes across the glass outside. He supposes she’s likely mulling over the hospital’s generator situation anew.

There is a change in the air, a sudden lack of electric current where previously there was. The vent nearest her bed - he appraises it is on her side, close to the wall - goes silent.

"Oh," Sakura murmurs. "Power's out."

Sasuke nods absentmindedly, caught on the way she purses her lips around the end of the statement, mouth slightly slackened.

He would like to kiss her here, he realizes all at once.

It’s not a new realization. He’s known it for a while. Years, if he’s being honest and recollecting certain dreams, resulting in wakening conundrums and general introspection on the nature of intimacy, on what it means to allow oneself to be that close to another person without an escape plan, no contingency for evasion.

Congeneric with most things he contemplates inwardly, things he turns over in his mind to view in every angle of light before actually doing , he finds the thought of being invited to share Sakura’s bed can’t compare to the reality of it, the exhilaration and tactility of being within her realm of reach.

It’s copiously overwhelming, this dizzying desire to reach out, ambit be damned. Sasuke would like to intertwine each of their fingers. He would like to run his thumb across the plushness of her lower lip, across every freckle dotting her skin. He would like to pull her close and press his lips to hers until neither of them can breathe.

He would like to do more than that.

He can’t, won’t, or at least, won’t for a long while, because that would be akin to asking for trouble. He has things he needs to fix beforehand, numerous plants in need of watering, habits he needs to break so as not to be found lacking.

It’s just… overwhelming, this conflict, the desire to do something, now that he’s here in the drastic thrill of this moment, hesitancy near conquered by the aroma of tart berry and the way his heart seems to be doing somersaults in his chest, overriding his mind’s best intentions.

“You smell nice,” Sakura says as her vision belatedly slinks away from the ceiling and back to him, at which point his neck warms; just how many times can one be caught staring?

Her words then catch up to him. He blinks in surprise, a flush inking onto his cheeks now, too; he finds himself thankful for the fact that his skin tans, as it’s roughly the same value as the red trickling across his cheeks and thus likely indistinguishable in the current lack of light.

"...I do?” He questions, once he’s realized he should actually formulate a response.

Sakura nods, slightly sheepish in the dark. He’s pretty sure her face is flushed, at which point he subtly, slowly exhales, because at least the flustered emotion is mutually assured; her digits are twitching a little at the edge of the blanket, betraying that she is not unaffected by his proximity.

"...Like what?" He’s never considered that he has any sort of aroma about him. His own soap’s scent is exceedingly subtle; he barely smells it, even an hour after showering.

Sakura explains in short order, barely missing a beat, as if she has known the answer for years.

"Woodsmoke with a hint of… something. Maybe sage?" She murmurs softly. "Or pine, maybe? Wild plants. And fire."

The explanation, albeit being uttered softly and kindly, tugs his mouth downwards a bit.

"I smell like fire?" It doesn't seem that would have a particularly good smell to him. He wasn't aware his Katon left any sort of aroma behind. He supposes his first few years of life he was rather surrounded by people who used the jutsu regularly, so he may be desensitized to it.

"I… Well, not like fire. Just… I think maybe your Katon no Jutsu?" Sakura extrapolates quietly, eerily mimicking his thoughts. "It's a good smell. Cedar, sage… other things… I don't know. I just… Your…"

He blinks, holding his breath for a second, because darkened green is holding him in place, studying him with an expression that seems… shy.

"Your lips get chapped, I think, after you use it. It's stronger then."

His frown sinks deeper, although Sakura is smiling as if this is the most wonderful fact in the world.

"...Is it bad?" He questions. Kissing someone with chapped lips sounds unpleasant. He appreciates the softness of her lips, often, to his muddlement. It's never occurred to him how his own mouth may feel to her.

"No, no!" Sakura insists with a small giggle. Her laugh shifts the blanket they’re sharing, a strange new sensation he finds he likes; it makes his frown dissipate. "No, I like it. I just mean, the aroma is stronger when your lips are a little chapped, so that might be where it comes from?"

He blinks, exhaling. It does make sense.

"I… I really like it. And… Well, I miss it, when you're away."

Sakura’s gaze disentangles from his, sweeping away. Her fingers are still playing with the edge of the blanket, fidgeting. And perhaps it’s the miniscule amount of alcohol circulating in his system, or, more likely, the ardor augmenting in his chest cavity consonant with oil drizzled atop fire, but he finds this revelation compelling enough to loosen his tongue, to a degree. The world won’t end if he voices certain things.

"...You smell nice, too." It’s true, after all.

Her focus comes back to him with suddenly rapt attention, eyes widening.

“I… I do?”

Sasuke nods once, in pace with the rain’s tempo on the roof. And then her countenance is questioning, so he offers more.

��Berries. Raspberry, mostly. And antiseptic, sometimes.”

Raised brows lower as her expression shifts from pleased to something stuck amongst befuddled and troubled.

“Antiseptic?” She asks in a small rattled voice, and he thinks she’s exceedingly cute.

“Aa,” he confirms quietly, failing to hide his amusement. “If you’ve been working.”

A pause stretches between them, conversation briefly overtaken by raindrops and wind in the beams and brick.

"How romantic," Sakura comments at last, good-natured sarcasm saturating her laugh. He exhales breathily in response via his nose, his own version of one.

Corrosion.

"I… miss it, too," he admits, distinctly quiet to the extent that he’s near whispering, as he finds baring his thoughts like this arduous. He assumes that the when I’m gone is implied.

"...Oh." Sasuke could be mistaken, but he believes there is perhaps awe in her tone as well as exorbitant appreciation for the admission.

"Um," she says after a moment as he continues to enjoy admiring her. Her visage is somewhat different in the dark, in her bed, color schemes throwing reflected light across her palette. "Thank you. It's my soap."

"I know," he says unthinkingly as he continues studying her, at which she blinks thrice and his brain catches up to what he’s vocalized. His neck heats of its own accord and he sweeps his gaze away from hers.

Idiot.

"I… Oh."

More rain spatters across the roof, plunking an even cadence like waves against a shoreline. He tries to force his pulse into a matching beat through sheer willpower.

"Um. Thank you.”

Sasuke nods absentmindedly, gaze remaining trained on the lavender blanket, the angle of the folds between them both.

“Hey, um… Sasuke-kun.”

Exhaling slowly, face still feeling inordinately warm, he meets her eyes anew to find her expression timid.

“Sorry, I know I’m talking a lot. I… Well, I… Do you think I could see your wrist?” She asks quietly. “I’m still… Well, I just… Would like to check your pulse again, I mean.”

His brows furrow together in question, at which point Sakura smiles sheepishly. A flash of lightning illuminates the sky through the glass; the scintillant plays across the sculpture of her face, cascading across a tilted cheekbone before streaming just as easily away into the gloaming.

“I mean, to make sure you don’t have a concussion.”

Barely holding back a snort, the words you don’t need to worry hover on his tongue, unsaid.

He gives in to the impulse from earlier instead, humoring her by slowly outreaching above her bedspread, past his perimeter to offer his hand. It may appease her; Sasuke doesn’t wish to make her worry.

Sakura’s fingers make contact with his skin and he tries valiantly not to shy away from the contact, the refuge, warm and soft.

It’s just her hand, he tells himself inwardly as she feels along for the vein, his pulse, and there it is: the thrill rushing through his veins.

Sixty seconds and then some tick by, agonizingly slowly. He spends them noting the exact hue and darkness differences between his tanned hand and her paler one, the mostly smooth expanse of hers versus his, nicked with puckered scar tissue.

“It’s back to normal,” Sakura eventually declares, tone tacitly relieved, although she makes no effort to pull her fingers back to herself. They rest atop the boundary of the middle of the bed, another message of opposites.

There is an immensely drawn out pause as he exhales slowly, thinking about the constitution of trust and radical honesties. He wishes, often, that he had known the truth about his clan from the get-go. He may have made vastly different choices, no apostasy and resultingly, no ensuing heartache for her and Naruto and Kakashi.

This is less high stakes than that, and it is that comparison that pushes him.

She’s drunk, though to what extent it’s hard to gauge. Perhaps she won’t fully remember tomorrow, if he admits it now. It shouldn't be such a colossal thing to admit, anyways, and she’s already offered him several things this particular evening. Sure, he’s vocalized one thing he’s been musing about for months, but that was in return for her acknowledgment. And he’s right here, with her, under her roof and invited into her bed.

“...It’s not,” he tells her quietly, forcing the truth out.

She frowns, and it amuses him immensely despite the way he’s suddenly finding it a challenge to swallow.

“It’s seventy-two,” Sakura says matter-of-factly. Her fingers still haven’t left his skin, resting against his wrist. “Your pulse typically runs a little fast for a Shinobi.”

He gives her a look that he hopes communicates what he’s trying to say, but she merely stares back as if flummoxed, as if what he’s said doesn’t make an ounce of sense. He may as well have just told her that the ocean is bronze instead of blue, or that finches are mammals instead of birds.

“It doesn’t,” he manages to confess, searching her expression for any meager glimpse of understanding that could save him from explaining the rest. And still, the rest of the words escape him, several avenues of relaying this information slipping through his fingers away into the interminable abyss.

You're the common denominator, he thinks and doesn't say, the words hovering in his throat; the phrasing is too detached for such a revelation. Were she to go searching in the archives of his medical files, the ones that are from the time they became Genin or earlier, she would see that well enough; his pulse has always run low, clear evidence of their profession’s requirement of physical fitness. He’s certain she has access to them, given her position. That she clearly hasn’t, that she is only working on the medical knowledge that she herself has been directly involved in, speaks volumes of her care for his privacy. It prompts more direct avenues of relaying this information.

It's you that makes-

No; perhaps not that direct.

Sakura’s entire being has shifted to severe confusion and concern. He looks at her directly, swallowing and searching for the words.

“...Sakura,” he enunciates slowly, daringly, voice almost a whisper and laden with meaning as he slips his fingers into the spaces between hers, effectively intertwining their digits amongst the schism separating them, careful and slow.

There is a lengthy pause in which she simply stares at him in confusion.

Then, the barest flicker of understanding leaks in.

“I…” Her voice tapers off, studying their joined hands. The quietness of her voice is nearly lost amongst the clamor of the precipitation.

“...I?” Sakura finally asks it in a tone that could be innocent, trailing off as if she's losing the thought, and he thinks to himself that inebriation aside, she remains very much Haruno Sakura, observant and shy and sharp as a whip and phrasing her speech in a way that gives him an out, should he want it.

For now, his mind repeats, and yes, sometimes that will do, a level of partnership they slowly but surely approach. But logic demands that it will be for longer if he isn’t willing to be direct about the more minor minutiae and fine details.

“You,” he confirms, wringing the single word out of his throat, realizing he doesn't want the out and simultaneously relieved that he won’t need to vocalize further than that. Perhaps admissions are easier said amongst pillows and darkness, holding the hand of the one you love and wrapped in the warmth of a blanket during a monsoon.

At his words, Sakura flushes dark, crimson smudging her pale cheeks to a darker gradient, but thanks to his brother, his eyesight is crystal clear.

“O-oh.” A smile, jubilant and infectious, ekes across her features. She bites her lip, gaze dropping to their intertwined fingers, studying them. She’s pretty even without light, he thinks.

"Me, too," Sakura whispers then, peeking at him and nudging his pointer finger to her wrist; he can easily reach it without untwining their digits, he finds when he follows her beckoning.

It takes him a second to comprehend that she’s inviting him to count her own pulse in return. So he does. The flicker of life is pleasant against his skin, counted in a thriving tempo against his own digit as the torrent pelts the roof.

He counts eighty-one beats in the span of the minute’s passing. He whispers it, too: “Eighty-one.”

Her smile turns shy, and she tightens her grip on his hand, squeezing.

“My normal is fifty-four.”

Ah.

It's nice to have that bit of knowledge, precious confirmation that the nerves he feels are reciprocated in objectively equal measure for it. It feels a bit like a reward for speaking what he’s thinking.

They stay like that, hands clasped together at the center of the bed resembling a promise and harkening to the rain and thunder and lightning as they dance into oblivion, time drizzling away.

Given it’s been a rather prolix day on her part, it doesn’t take long for Sakura to drift asleep. Her eyes slip closed, and soon her breathing levels off fully, hand slackening slightly in its grip against his.

As he planned and for multiple reasons, Sasuke doesn't succumb to sleep. Other than those that are rather obvious, puddling memories that begin to throb in equivalence to his stump at the pressure change, there is one that stands out above all else.

Now that she's mostly still, chest rising and falling evenly in sync with the plunk of deluge against the shingles, he sees that Sakura’s hair in this lighting blends in with the color of her comforter near perfectly. It almost looks mauve, a small shred of moonbeam igniting the mulberry crown of her head. He’s studied Sakura while she sleeps here and there over the years, mostly on missions, though there was once in the hospital after the war when she fell asleep at both his and Naruto’s bedside, and then the time more recently when he encouraged her to take a nap on her own couch.

This, however, is different. There’s a threshold crossed, some deeper succedaneum of intimacy ruptured between them and dipped into. The buzzing, muddled, good feeling filling the zenith behind his ribs still hasn’t let up since the second she asked him to stay.

He’s allowed to be this close to her. Moreso, she wants him here, in her bed. And that’s before the mutual admittances, the quiet credence and metamorphosed cognition.

Sasuke knows that Sakura is attractive, uniquely so. He thinks to himself that she's pretty at minimum several times a day, and, often to his great consternation, more than that during certain nights.

But here, slivers of a scant moon and haphazard storm refulgence cascading across her hair and catching a pale eyelash or three, Sakura is beautiful. Completely at ease with his presence aside her, freckle faded a cooler subset, even breathing causing her chest to rise and fall mere inches away from his. She is a soft balm for the sharp edges of life, a violaceous respite enwrought in shades of mauve and plum.

She's also warm, sharing a blanket as the torrent batters the roof. He feels it in their numinous enlaced fingers, in the body heat that inches its way further to his side beneath the comforter the longer he looks, crossing the centered ambit due to the nature of endothermic process.

He pushes the aching memory beckoning at the corner of his conscience away repeatedly, allocating it for later and trying to focus on aroma alone, uniquely her, all remnant petrichor and raspberry.

And what he wants is wickedly selfish, but he loves her so much that it physically aches behind his sternum, the avidity palpable and enthralling. It is also an alternative, a diversion with the potential to tug him away from doors that have been closed so long the hinges have rusted together, decayed metals that may disintegrate in his lone hand, were it not kept occupied.

And, above all, he knows he wants to remember this for as long as he lives, far beyond life’s epilogue of fallen, frosted leaves and colorless ash.

So once she's been out for at least an hour and he's turned the idea over in his head half a hundred times, he capitulates, and a trio of tomoe begin spinning.

This is the purpose of Sharingan eyes, he thinks as the colors spin into sharpened, captivating clarity: capturing the evanescent. Her hair really is lavender here, beguilingly ataractic, cascading messily across her pillow of a like value. Forget training, forget battles, forget the Uchiha being made to be warriors, in possession of fire and alloy bones and acuminate teeth; this is exactly what Itachi's gift is for, his sacrifice, what his ancestors should have fought and died for.

He captures her in his cognizance perfectly, unmitigated in all-immersive study, her fingers paramountly intertwined with his and her fair skin and the even rise and fall of her chest, scattered and skewed lavender hair framing her like the prettiest picture as time melts through a sieve.

Selfish , he thinks after a few minutes of careful examination, sated atramentous tomoe revolving away as if carried swiftly by nature’s stream, but her image, safe and at ease in his presence, is drenched into his retinas for the rest of his days.

Selfish… but worth it. It is something to behold foremost, to clutch immemorial and dear, filaments to recall and turn over in the light when he is at his disconsolate weakest. He understands why people write poems about lovers, all at once; this is a level of intimacy he's having difficulty fully grasping, all heart amalgamation, yet there isn't a thing in the world that could affright him away from her at this moment.

She's lovely, fairer than any rose and ethereally unparalleled, the most beautiful mercy he's ever rhapsodically espied or memorized this way.

He still doesn't sleep, but the steady ballad of tenebrific fading rain, emulsion repelled down the wet roof, and Sakura’s quiet breathing inches rather than feet away keeps him close company over the ensuing hours.

Under the gleaming light of a quiescent clear morning, the rising sun sweet and heavy with gold, her hair regains its true color.

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sasukeandsakuralover · 2 years ago

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Sasuke marking his territory. 🥰💍

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sasukeandsakuralover · 2 years ago

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The way she puts her hair behind her ears. I'm so in love with this woman.

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sasukeandsakuralover · 2 years ago

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I love them your honor

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sasukeandsakuralover · 2 years ago

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Sakura mermaid 2022

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sasukeandsakuralover · 3 years ago

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Title: Like Gold

Disclaimer: I did not write Naruto. This is a fan-made piece solely created for entertainment purposes.

Rating: M

AO3 Link - FF.net Link - includes author's notes

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Chapter 15/?: Isthmus

A few days of effortless routine pass, peaceful afternoons melting into evenings spent out of the heat wave in Sakura’s apartment. She fixes a flare-up in his stump one afternoon, green chakra soothing frayed nerve endings. The next, they prepare rei shabu together in her kitchen, enjoyable in its chill as they overlook the street below her window; it’s exceedingly empty due to the rise in temperature, save the occasional passerby or itinerant bird. They do see her neighbor arriving back home once as they eat, the courier at the other end of the second floor. She’s rather quick for a civilian, darting back out into the street and around the far corner after only a few minutes, an additional bag thrown over her shoulder.

“Her boyfriend lives on the edge of the village,” Sakura comments, hand propping up her chin on the table. “A fisherman; he’s out at the lake or the river nearly every day. Ino knows him.”

Sasuke simply nods. Sakura’s apartment building is nice and in a relatively quiet portion of town. While it‘s in a convenient location in terms of access to everything, he can see the appeal of the edge of the village; it’s more naturalistic. It brings to mind recollections of backyards and clan grounds annexed at another edge of Konoha, wilderness teeming at the fringe and a handful of treasured walks with Itachi, dodging thistles and poison oak.

With the expansion of the village proceeding at what he’s gathered in his short time back is a rather breakneck pace - there’s still construction going on in several areas from what he’s seen - he ponders once again how long the edge of the village will stay the edge of the village. Though he’s been watering the lily buds diligently, he still hasn’t gone beyond the memorial stone, into what used to be the Uchiha District. It’s a task for another month, he thinks. Maybe when the autumn equinox arrives; it’s been ages since he was in Konoha for that tradition.

His usual shared dinner with Sakura drifts earlier and earlier, thus offering such glimpses at the lives of the people who pass by day to day during the waning afternoon time slot. There’s an exordium as of late, to stay longer into the night than he has in the past, midnight and beyond. Usually it’s accompanied by some sort of snack Sakura presents in the later hours of their eves spent together, walnuts or bagged seaweed tempura or his small stash of snacks in her drawer. He surmises it may be partly an effort on her part to get him to eat more, which he doesn’t mind, as he particularly enjoys the indulgences that come before said snacking.

“We could watch another movie,” Sakura says near every night like clockwork, cheeks red and eyes sweeping away from him shyly, as if they’ve made any effort at all to watch the one that’s just finished, credits rolling.

He hypothesizes that she could just be better at multitasking than him, able to ascertain at least some of the plot and dialogue despite her lips melding to his for the better portion of each film’s sprawl. In credence of his theory is the fact that her pile of papers has made three further appearances during the earlier evenings, though she always slides them aside to their designated spot on her bookshelf prior to seven.

Sasuke, however, is convinced he is quite incapable of focusing on anything else when her fingers are sliding through his hair and her tongue is drifting along his, sweltry hot. The scent of raspberries is disarming and overwhelming when he’s this close to her, all audio irrelevant background noise in comparison to the hum of each breath Sakura takes. Sometimes, right when they change angles and in advance of their lips colliding anew, he can catch the hint of a sweet sound she makes low in her throat; he thinks it may be the cusp of something akin to a whimper.

It hasn’t helped his secluded profligacies within the privacy of his own bedroom in the slightest, as he yearns to hear just what sort of other enticing noises Sakura elicits during certain… activities. His subconscious persistently fills in the gaps, should he have such a dream; he wakes on several occasions, flushed from visuals that involve peeling thin crimson fabric and midnight netting away from her freckled skin, clearing the way so that he may caress each and every square inch of her.

He knows he’s not ready for that by a long shot just yet. He’s not even ready to trail his fingers anywhere other than across her cheek or atop her shoulder or through her pale hair, silk in his palm. It will take time.

Still. It’s altogether impossible for him to catch even a hint of what’s playing out on the screen when they’re kissing like that. It’s possible that the masculine system is simply wired differently, utterly subservient to such distractions. The aftertaste of whatever tea she’s been drinking lingers in his mouth whenever they finally part, a sensation he’s quickly become addicted to: peach, white coconut creme, caramelized pear, none too sweet.

It’s still very new, but Sasuke is rather enjoying figuring it out. He concludes Sakura must be, too, as she initiates just as often as he does, which has eliminated most of his qualms; he’d been apprehensive initially that perhaps he’d be bad at this sort of thing, with as many times as he’d ruminated without acting on the desire, but he must not be terrible if she returns every kiss with equal fervor. She seems rather good at it, herself. It makes him wonder if she’s ever kissed anyone else. Realistically he presumes that she must have; Sakura was always a pretty girl, even when they were children. The beautiful and capable woman she has grown into has likely attracted a fair amount of attention.

He would never ask, of course. It is categorically none of his business, given the heartbreak he forced upon her for years and the subsequent wait for him to be ready for any kind of closer relationship. He starkly ignores the part of him that aches with a great deal of jealousy at the mere thought of Sakura kissing anyone else, locking it away behind old doors that usher other parlous and nugatory feelings of his away for containment.

It doesn’t matter now. He sort of wishes he could just lose the key to that sort of cerebration already. Other troubling tendencies linger behind that aged wood and its rusted hinges, insecurities and his penchant for self-punishment and his propensity to overanalyze every situation, sometimes to the extent of onerous and unjustified panic.

Someday he’ll get to them, clear away the sediment; spring cleaning, perhaps. For now, he’s content in relishing this new stage fully. He feels… closer to Sakura than before. He knew that would happen, but there’s a familiar ease, a sedate domesticity, that he experiences within the walls of her home that he hasn’t really had occasion to feel anywhere else, or at least, hasn’t had occasion to feel since he was very young. He loves spending all of his time with her, whether it’s cooking or kissing or sneaking an occasional glimpse of her as she scrawls things into her notes, fine pink brows furrowed and jade eyes scanning the paper analytically. Since he’s begun to sit closer to her on the couch, he’s noticed that they appear to be corrections of some sort, her handwriting with its swooping As flooding the margins with torrents of precisely inscribed notes. He doesn’t pry about what she’s working on; it may be confidential, and thus there’s a sort of implied trust in him there, too, of which he doesn’t wish to contravene.

He used to ache for this feeling, pine for it desperately, the indulgence and eudemonia of hours of quietly shared company and more open affections. As a child, he used to train to the point of exhaustion, pushing his body to the limits in the hopes that he could rip the desire for it out of himself. So now, contrarily and to make up for lost time, he allows himself to revel in it. It’s a nice change of pace from licking his aged wounds to the point of septicity.

Following another heated session of kissing that was abruptly interrupted by rolling credits, Sakura mentions something about making iced tea at home soon, or maybe lemonade, as she rifles through her drawer of snacks. A questioning glance is thrown his way as she pulls out his popcorn.

He nods absentmindedly, barely hearing in his distraction, incalescence still cooling behind his ribs, but understanding at least the visual portion of the offer.

“Is there any kind of iced tea you like?” She’s still a little flushed as she turns to face him. “Other than sencha, I mean.”

His brain has barely caught up to his body standing in the dark of her kitchen, outwardly still feeling each of her fingertips at his scalp and inwardly feeling like his stomach is recovering from its compendiary transformance into molten ardor.

“...What?” That which is feverish floods his neck and licks at his ears. He’s so stupidly fixated on that freckle on her cheek, as well as the way her lips look after they’ve been kissing: slightly plump, parted invitingly. That’s done nothing for his aggrandized and enticing dreams, either, frissons of temptation that enwrap him as they slide down his spine.

“Iced tea; do you just like sencha?” She asks softly as she hands him the bag. “Or are there others you like? Or… I can make unsweetened lemonade, too.”

He latches on to the end part of the sentence the quickest, as it’s the only part that computes initially as he drops his gaze to the bag he’s now clutching.

“Lemonade,” he murmurs, trying to force the color from his face and exceptionally thankful that Sakura is a lamp aficionado. There’s limited light to discern said coloring here, unless one has the Sharingan.

“Okay,” she says, smiling brightly. “The next time I’m at the market, I’ll get some extra lemons to make some.”

The next evening, another movie serving as background noise finished, they venture to the kitchen again in search of an eleven o’clock snack. Sasuke opts for the almonds this go-around - he may need to pick up a second bag for whenever the next team movie is - but Sakura trails to her refrigerator, pulling out a small container of anko dumplings.

Sasuke eyes them curiously in the scant seconds that pass prior to returning to the living room. Their dinner was simple today, and Sakura herself grabbed what they needed for the meal from the fridge, so he hadn’t seen that container before now. They appear well-made, visually appealing enough that he expects she must have picked them up from somewhere; perhaps it was the bakery nearest her apartment, the one that he suspects sells confections.

As she sets up the next movie, Sasuke finds himself recalling one occasion when they were Genin, on their lone mission to the Land of Waves, in which she’d scarfed down anko dumplings with considerable delight at dinner. He’d been preoccupied with a rather juvenile eating contest with their third teammate, but he’d still noticed; if there’s one defining characteristic that he has, it’s his ability to be methodically observant, often to the point of his detriment. Racking his brain, he thinks he can also recall at least one other occasion in which she’d ordered them at a restaurant that Kakashi had taken them all to at the tail end of another Genin mission closer to home.

Though he himself doesn’t like dango anymore - she kindly questions him if he’d like any as she takes her seat scant inches away from him, even though she knows he doesn’t like sweet things, to which he politely declines - he still mentally files this information away for future reference as he eats a few heaping handfuls of almonds. He hasn’t stepped foot inside a bakery since he was seven, but he does have access to his own kitchen now.

In this small collection of days that bring May to a close, Sasuke doesn’t receive any mission assignments. He assumes their old sensei and his returned assistant Shizune must be gearing up for the upcoming Chunin Exams, and thus he is probably loath to send many Konoha ninja out in the next few weeks; there is always the possibility of getting held up somewhere for longer than expected. It’s likely that they’re taking an ample chunk of Konoha’s upper ranks to assist in Sunagakure, too, which means there needs to be an even rounding of capable ninja left here to maintain the village’s security. If Naruto’s going with Kakashi, Sasuke expects he himself will be home for a good while, as will Sakura; most of June they’ll be here, possibly even into July, save any sort of emergency. He supposes it’s probable that he will be assigned guard duties with some degree of regularity in the next month.

Going so long without a mission assignment used to bother him, eager as he was when he was younger to attain breaks from the village, but now he can’t find it in himself to care one bit. Summer heat has hit Konoha with the same reprisal it always has, sweltering temperatures coating everything hot and humid. He much prefers simplistic evenings at Sakura’s apartment, watching movies and snacking and kissing her until time blurs to the waning width of a crescent moon.

Amidst all of this, he somehow manages to acquire a summer sickness.

It begins as a tickle in the back of his mouth, possibly near his tonsils. He notices it as he gently sifts his remaining water over greening lily buds well past midnight, just there behind his tongue, and chalks it up to the fact that he was reading the names, the pain in the back of his throat cresting as it always does here.

Once he arrives back at his apartment, he discerns that his mouth is sort of dry, but he assumes it’s due to the fact that it's brutally humid. Even now, sweat is trailing down his neck in the calefaction. He downs an entire bottle of water in one go to counteract it.

He doesn't sleep particularly well, but it's not one of his worst nightmares - he doesn’t throw up this go-around - so he's grateful. However, upon waking, the twitching feeling at the back of his throat has intensified to an ache.

Frowning once his heart rate has decelerated and he's stared out his window for a bit, he procures a cough drop and relocates the lamp to the living room end table so he can read on the couch, sprawled out lazily in pursuit of distraction. The hours evanesce away, and one lozenge becomes five.

An occasional cough quakes his chest, though he thinks it’s from his mouth being persistently dry rather than from anything severely infectious plaguing his lungs. It's… unpleasant. Torrid and irritating, affliction lurking at the back of his throat each time he attempts to clear it. Muscle memory demands he raise what used to be his dominant arm to cough into his bicep sleeve, but it's empty, so that doesn't work so well. What’s left of his left arm only partially covers his mouth.

He's rarely been ill over the past few years, and only once did he ever have any sort of cough accompanying it. He spent very limited hours physically around other people, he supposes, choosing to say little and retire early on the rare occasion that he was under someone else’s roof rather than sprawled beneath the stars alone. Perhaps he caught something from someone he crossed paths with at the market.

His mouth sinks downward once the fit passes, brows furrowing ahead of another cough rising to take its place. He raises his right arm this time, coughing into the interior portion of his elbow, then rises to procure a drink.

It’s wholly disorienting; the world rotates and knocks something aching in his skull. When his fingers skim his forehead, he deduces that it’s warm as the ground relevels itself. The beginning of a migraine, he concludes, as well as a fever.

Reaching for one of the jars on his tea shelf, Sasuke sets a cup of caffeinated sencha to brew, swallows two pain relief pills from the medicine cabinet, and chases the medicine with a cough drop prior to dragging his spare comforter rather unceremoniously to his couch for further comfort.

The tea soothes his throat incrementally, and his headache eases slightly; whether it was the caffeine or the medication that did the trick, he couldn’t say. It's not until he rises to fix breakfast, most of his book on the history of the Land of Tea finished, that he realizes he has some sort of a genuine chill, too. Sasuke scans the thermostat for confirmation as a shiver ripples through him; the temperature reads the same as it always does.

There’s a frown permanently affixed to his face now. He shrugs out of his usual long-sleeved shirt, deducing that a heavier fabric he usually reserves for cooler seasons and climates would better suit the situation he’s found himself in. It helps a little, but he still encases himself back in the comforter, an occasionally coughing cocoon of a human, brows furrowed as he flips through the art book again in want of something to do to distract him from this infirmity.

The sun has climbed higher in the east, just barely clearing the horizon. He’s trying to decide if he should make the jaunt to Sakura’s to cancel their plans for this afternoon, lest he infect her with whatever he’s caught, when the telltale banging of Naruto's fist resounds against his door.

"Teme!" He calls between heavy knocks that are sure to wake his neighbor if she’s home; they’re boisterous enough that they hurt his head with each sharp pound. "Kakashi-sensei is working with Shizune this morning. Let's spar!!"

Sasuke sighs, lone hand rising to his head in pain at the sudden volume as he rises slightly unsteadily, not at all befitting that of a ninja.

"Hey, teme, are you home?!" Additional banging accompanied by a slight twang of an object resonates atop the vertical stretch of wood. “C’mon, hurry up! It’ll be hot as fuck if we don’t go soon! I already promised Hinata-chan that I’d drink this whole thing of water, and-”

"Stop. I'm coming," Sasuke calls, followed by a swallow that requires some effort. His throat hurts more now, he realizes as he nears the door that’s still being hammered on relentlessly by two fists; the dobe must not have heard him.

There has to be a better system for spars than this, he judges, brows furrowing in disquietude. Some sort of designated day and time. He simultaneously contemplates how often the idiot’s volume has bothered his neighbor or woken her child.

His fingers find the knob and he opens the door, only slightly as he doesn’t want to permit Naruto any kind of opening to barge his way in. He is unsurprised to see his best friend appearing as if he’s just rolled out of bed, blond hair skewed sideways and both fists frozen in midair. One is wrapped around a huge thermos that must have been contributing to the audial uproar.

"Oh, good, I thought maybe you slept at Sakura-chan's or something-"

Sasuke’s neck warms as he pins him with an unimpressed look.

"Oh." Intense blue assesses him as he lowers his curled fists from the air finally. "Uh."

Sasuke narrows his eyes when his best friend’s expression morphs into one of amusement.

"You… kinda look like shit," the idiot chuckles.

Observation of the century, he thinks and nearly says, but it’s about two too many words; he doesn’t wish for his throat to ache further than it already does.

"I'm sick," Sasuke deadpans instead, glaring kunai at his teammate with a pounding head. The warm light cast from the rising sun isn't doing wonders for his headache situation; it’s throbbing worse now than before with the continued exposure.

For some reason that results in the dobe’s laugh intensifying. It starts as a snort but quickly escalates into a snicker, then a cackle. If his neighbor wasn’t already awake, she’s sure to be now.

"What's the matter, teme?" He lilts in a teasing voice that causes Sasuke's patience to run thin and his frown run thinner still, incensed. There's a smug grin on the dobe’s face, the kind that appears when Naruto is about to say something catastrophically fucking imbecilic.

“Swap too much spit with Sakura-chan?”

Sasuke’s brow twitches.

“You know, you should go to the hospital-”

Immediately sensing where this line of reasoning is going, Sasuke promptly shuts the door - not a slam, but not muted, either, and no, he is definitely not red in the face, it’s just the fever.

He blocks out most of whatever the idiot ends up saying - some thinly veiled and highly implicative innuendo about making an appointment - through sheer willpower and a lengthy, irritated exhale. By the time he’s switched to inhaling, a new round of laughter is apparent from the other side of the wood.

Sasuke relocks the door in the most methodical, purposeful, and audible manner possible, scowling darkly.

"Don't worry!" The dobe calls from the other side of the door, laughing. "I'm sure Sakura-chan would love to make a house call, just for you! And anyways, she-"

Sasuke stalks to his bedroom and yanks the comforter over his head, drowning out whatever the idiot’s going on about with another forced exhale and determined to go back to sleep for an hour, at least until nine. He’ll figure out what to do regarding their afternoon plans later, he thinks through an additional round of clearing his parched throat, triggered by the sudden change to a horizontal position.

He's tired enough that it actually works. His last thought afore sleep claiming him is that he really is genuinely sick for the first occasion in a while, and is definitely running a fever.

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He's not sure how long he sleeps for - it feels like twenty minutes or so, strange pieces of a hazy and familiar gray dream just beginning to color his subconscious - but a few sharp, precise raps on the door have him rising haphazardly from slumber, ready to lay into Naruto despite how dry and sore his throat is. There’s sleep clouding the corners of his recognition and the edges of his eyes are watering, irritated, as his hand unlocks the door as if detached from his body just yet. The sleepy retort is already on his tongue when-

He blinks in bewilderment, both at the overwhelming amount of bright light and the colors that are still solidifying before him, below his direct line of sight. Definitively, it is not a blur of orange and yellow that comes into focus.

It's pink and green instead; Sakura is blinking up at him owlishly. It’s nearly midday, judging by the sun well above them both. He's slept for the better portion of three hours rather than the one he intended.

"Hey," she greets softly. "Naruto stopped by and said you might be sick." Pale green is both assessing and caring as she gazes up at him. "I assumed we’d cancel our afternoon plans so you can rest, but I wanted to… to check on you.” She motions towards the bag curved around her shoulder.

He blinks as his pupils adjust to the harsh gleam, trying to process through the splitting migraine that’s now surging with a vengeance. He’s still stuck on how he’s somehow slept for three hours, and how his eyes are, for some reason, itching now.

Must be the light. He blinks a few more times for good measure, slowly.

"If… if that's okay," she says, an uncertain expression overtaking her features as he continues to stare at her, brows furrowing finally as his brain catches up with what she's said. “Or… If you’d rather I didn’t, I… I can…”

"Okay." His voice comes out a shred rougher than it usually does, but he manages, pulling the door open wider to let her through; it feels as though his throat has been coated with sandpaper on both sides and it’s grinding against the remaining contents of his pharynx. “Sorry. I slept longer than I thought.”

Sakura’s face brightens, shifting to something like recognition - he’s succeeded in communicating that his delay in speech wasn’t because her presence was unwanted - and her lips quirk upwards.

“Oh,” she murmurs airily, beaming as she moves to step inside, fingers grasping at the strap of her bag. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“...It’s fine,” he mumbles, still disoriented as he closes the door behind them. He examines the lock for a protracted moment, considering, because the idea of the dobe barging in on an examination is not the most appealing mental picture, but he ultimately decides against it. Sakura likely won’t be here for very long, and he doesn’t want to get her ill, either.

Though now that he’s thinking about it, they did sort of… spend a rather significant amount of time kissing on her couch again, the night previous.

And the night before that.

…And the night before that.

He mentally reviews old lessons on contagions from the Academy ages ago, tiredly trying to discern if he has already given it to her. She would be showing symptoms already if he had, he reasons; she would only be a day behind him at best in exposure. His brain feels muddy, like it’s lagging exorbitantly behind everything occurring in the present, just on the edge of slumber.

When he turns to her, rubbing at his eyes a little as they’re still sort of irritated, she’s already slipped her shoes off and is looking around somewhat uncertainly.

His focus meets hers in silent question.

“Um.” Sakura blinks. “Where should I…?”

Ah. This is only her second time here. The couch is probably more comfortable, but it’s also probably covered in more of his germs.

“...Here’s fine,” he elucidates, motioning to the table prior to absentmindedly flipping the kitchen light on. He squints at the offending brightness once he does, head pounding and blinking as it occurs to him that he might appear a bit… unkempt as of yet. He frowns, briefly recalling that his hair tends to skew away from whichever side of his head he slept on.

If she notices, Sakura pays no mind to it. She simply nods once and then turns to take a seat, beginning to pull a kit of some kind out of her bag. He takes the opportunity to pour himself a glass of water, as he realizes he’s presumably going to have to talk in regards to symptoms and he would rather avoid having to cough in her immediate vicinity.

A stretched sip is taken, hydration temporarily soothing his pharynx, before he swivels back towards the dining table. Within the kit, he can see, was a stethoscope, an ear instrument, a cuff to measure blood pressure, what he assumes is a penlight, and a sealed clear bag that contains several things: a tissue, swabs, small tubes, and one of the wooden sticks typically used to hold the tongue down when examining the throat.

There is also a new package of the menthol-lyptus cough drops among the instruments, shiny azure blue like the others. He notices it last, tired brain processing through each item at a delayed pace.

His haggard gaze flits to her with immense appreciation as he sinks into the remaining seat on her side of the table. He’s only gone through about one and a half of the initial three bags she gave him, but he’ll probably use a lofty number of them up during this bout of illness. It was kind of her.

It seems she reads the gratitude in his expression, smiling under his continued appraisal. Her cheeks flush slightly as she rips open the package and offers him one.

“So,” Sakura says softly as he carefully unwraps it. “What are your symptoms?” Her eyes are kind as they temporarily flick to the glass of water in advance of coming back to rest on him. “I’m assuming a sore throat?”

Sasuke nods, bringing the cough drop up to slip beyond his lips.

“...Headache.” He pauses, situating the cough drop into the hollow of his cheek and thinking. “Chills.”

She surveys him for a long moment as if working through her next words or perhaps considering something of note.

“Runny nose or congestion at all?” She questions finally as she picks up the blood pressure cuff. He places the wrapper on the dining table before offering his lone arm out to her.

“No.”

She situates it easily, securing the apparatus around his bicep in advance of upping the pressure. He focuses on the feeling of the cough drop numbing his throat, dissolving into an essence of relief. Pressure amps and declines around the squeezed muscle of his arm.

“Just a little higher than usual,” she remarks eventually. The pressure releases as she peels it away.

“Pulse next, please.”

There’s a delay as he processes the instruction, blinking prior to holding out his arm again; he allows his elbow to rest on the surface of the table between them. Both of her hands ascend to grip his wrist, plying for his radial artery.

Even with as tired as he is, he can’t ignore the latent tangibility of her fingertips feel against his skin there. He barely breathes for a moment, closing his eyes and overly aware of the ambrosia of raspberry for about the three-hundredth time since he’s returned.

“Hmm,” Sakura appraises thoughtfully when her fingers finally fall away and he exhales, thinking this shouldn’t affect him so, especially not now, given their more recent activities. “Your heart rate isn’t really much higher than normal, but that doesn’t mean you’re not sick.”

Sasuke supposes his heart rate when ill certainly would present synonymous to his heart rate when in the immediate close proximity of his girlfriend, her touch at his bare skin for an extended period of time. He briefly toys with the idea of trying to mentally count the measures of his own pulse when they are next occupied with kissing, but that notion quickly devolves into a frown, because it will probably be a while now before he kisses Sakura again.

“You’re more tired than usual?”

Pulled from the doldrums, he nods stiffly as she reaches for the ear instrument, neck warming.

“Do you think you have a fever?” She questions as she puts some sort of cap atop the instrument for what he assumes are sanitary reasons. “Your wrist felt kind of warm.”

Sasuke dips his chin again in confirmation, rotating his head slightly so she can take his temperature via his ear. It takes only a minute.

“One hundred and two,” she informs him softly, taking the instrument from his ear and removing the miniature cap from it to be set atop the tissue, the pile of things to dispose of later. “So a small one.” She sets the instrument aside, turning back to him. “Any cough?”

“Not really,” he answers. “Sore. Dry.” He pauses, then adds, “I cough if I don’t have water.”

Analytical eyes peer up at him before she procures the wooden stick with one hand and the penlight with the other. “Do your lymph nodes hurt at all?”

His brows knit together.

“...I’m not sure.” They don’t feel swollen, really, but his need for sleep has been attracting all of his focus since the sun rose, to the extent that he hasn’t really glimpsed himself in the mirror at all. He also hasn’t brushed his teeth yet today, he realizes with some regret.

Sakura nods as if this makes sense. “I’d like to look at your throat, if that’s okay.”

Sasuke swallows again as she grabs the wooden stick and penlight. He then opens his mouth; the cough drop is a meager remnant stored in the hollow of his cheek.

Sakura frowns once she’s got the light aimed for analysis.

“Say ah, please?”

He complies, feeling inelegant in all respects.

She pulls the stick away after a short few seconds of study, though for some reason she keeps the penlight on. He closes his mouth and situates the cough drop back onto the main spread of his tongue, blinking slowly as the menthol eases the dryness that came with the open air exposure. His eyes feel like they’re about to droop shut any minute.

"Could I look at your eyes quick?"

His brows furrow as he processes the question, flummoxed - I haven’t used them is on the tip of his tongue, in reference to his doujutsu - to which Sakura smiles patiently.

“I think you probably have a bacterial infection. Your tonsils are swollen.” She motions to the penlight still in her palm. "I'd guess group A strep throat, but you don't have any white spots yet. Sometimes the bacteria manifests in the eyes, too. Conjunctivitis."

He blinks once more, regard flickering tiredly but purposefully to the penlight to grant her permission, as if to say go ahead whilst sparing his pharynx the further motion of words.

Sakura’s gaze softens prior to discarding the stick, placed atop the tissue so the part that was in his mouth doesn’t touch the table.

She then switches the penlight to her left hand and reaches toward him with her right.

His brows knit closer together in sluggish puzzlement before she's sifting his hair away from his left eye carefully, touch gentle and expression soft.

Heat licks at his ears. Ah.

He’s an idiot. Of course his hair was in her way. Perhaps he's more out of it than he thought.

Her fingertips graze his cheekbone and part of his temple slightly as she raises the penlight. She shines it into his left first, then lets her digits fall away from his cheek as she shifts the light over his other eye. He hopes they're not infected, or, if they are, that they don't appear too… gross. He vaguely remembers just two other occasions in which he acquired conjunctivitis; neither of them left his eyes particularly presentable, visually speaking.

“They look a little irritated,” she observes matter-of-factly, clicking the light off prior to setting it aside. She then reaches for one of the swabs. “Could I swab your throat for a test? If it is strep, I’ll prescribe an antibiotic.”

Sasuke nods yet again, to which Sakura smiles in response.

“Alright. Tilt your head back, please.”

He stares at the ceiling above him, moving the last remnant of the cough drop to his cheek again before he opens his mouth.

“Say ah,” Sakura instructs. “This will probably tickle a little.”

He does, and she quickly slides the swab over what he assumes are his tonsils, one swipe on each side. Once it’s out, he clears his throat to satisfy the small itch as she situates the swab neatly into one of the test tubes. He follows it up with a sip of his water.

“I’ll stop by the hospital to run this, and then I’ll be back later if it’s positive,” she says smoothly as she wraps the tube again; he expects it’s to offer it some cushion in the kit. “I’ll bring eye ointment, too, just in case.”

Sasuke nods once more, taking another measured sip. She begins placing the other items back into her kit, though she leaves the stethoscope out.

“I’d like to listen to your heart before I go,” she comments. “Sometimes group A can spread to the heart and damage the valves; scarlet or rheumatic fever. It’s probably too early for that if you just started having major symptoms this morning, but it’s standard practice to check anyway.”

“...Okay.” It’s also standard Shinobi protocol to take every precaution available when it comes to the possibility of impaired health, especially involving a vital organ. He’s not particularly a fan of being poked and prodded given his history, but if it’s Sakura, he doesn’t mind. He has come to know that she excels in every aspect of her profession, and bedside manner is no exception.

At that thought, he forcefully shoves the idiot’s teasing from earlier to the back of his mind as Sakura situates the stethoscope in her ears, lifting the chest piece and pressing it to his sternum. He breathes slowly, in and out as his eyes droop somewhat; it somehow makes him sleepier, inanition ready to overtake him.

“Your heart sounds good,” Sakura comments as she removes the chest piece. “No concern there.” She then plucks the other side of the stethoscope from her ears, moving to return that to the kit, too; he assumes that means she doesn’t need to check his lungs this time. The bag of cough drops stays on the table as she swivels her upper body to grab her tote bag from where she’s left it.

“Do you need anything?” She queries as she turns back towards him, and he gets the distinct impression that Sakura the clinician has vacated the premises entirely. “I could make some soup if you want. Chicken noodle, maybe? If you’re on an antibiotic, you’ll want to avoid anything acidic or with dairy.”

Sasuke’s brow furrows. He doesn’t want to get her sick with extended time spent here, but he would be deluding himself if he didn’t admit that such a dish sounds like heaven right about now with the way his throat aches. He may be able to make something similar on his own in terms of having the ingredients on hand, but his will to produce such a dish is another matter entirely. He’s too tired to consider making anything that’s not ochazuke today, and he also knows he likes Sakura’s cooking; he doesn’t doubt that he would like this rendition of soup, given she seems to utilize her slow cooker fairly frequently.

He supposes it is her day off, and they were supposed to hang out later anyways, so it’s not like she’d be neglecting other plans on his behalf. It’s very kind of her to offer.

You shouldn’t just… suffer in silence, if something hurts.

“...Soup would be good,” he admits quietly after some internal review, realizing she’s waiting for a response and he’s taking too long. He pointedly slides his focus to the cough drops atop the wood grain of the table before refocusing on her tiredly. “Thank you.”

A pleased smile blooms on her lips.

“You’re very welcome,” she says. “I’ll try to get Naruto to leave you alone for a bit, too. I’m guessing he nearly busts your door down each time like he does mine? Between the door and the window, I’m surprised my office is still intact at this point.”

Sasuke snorts, and her grin widens in amusement.

“...That’s the reason my door is usually locked,” he admits, something occurring to him as he speaks the words. The knocking earlier, sharp and precise, was not how Sakura normally knocks on a door. Not that he’s heard her knock often as of late, now that he’s thinking about it, but when they were younger, servicing clients in and outside of the village on missions, it was usually a few gentle raps, more of a grazing of her knuckles against the egress. It was a sharp contrast to Naruto’s discordant and careless whacks even back then.

Which means that she likely knocked lightly at first today but he slept right through it.

Suppose it wouldn’t hurt. It’s overnight, always, when his issues with sleep disturbances emerge, surpassing further than a few hours of slumber as a nap does. It should be fine to provide her a way in for later today in case he’s asleep.

Sakura rises with a musical laugh, shifting her tote bag back in place on her shoulder. “I’ll see what I can do.” Shining soft green levels him, beautiful and rich with mirth as she turns towards the door.

“...Sakura,” he says as he also rises abruptly, inwardly wincing at what it does to his head. She pauses halfway to the door, angling herself back towards him with a curious expression.

Crossing the small kitchen to the drawer on the far left, Sasuke pulls it open quietly. He doesn’t own enough kitchen supplies to fill all of the compartments in the space, so this one has remained mostly empty, save for the spare nickel-brass key that came with the place. He’s never had a use for it, so he just left it in the same location the previous tenant had: at the back of an unused drawer.

He turns to Sakura with the cool metal in hand, sluggishly so he doesn’t get disoriented again by sudden movement. In one gradual but sure motion he’s extending it out to her.

She blinks twice, staring at it with widened eyes and a nonplussed countenance that makes his throat tighten uneasily.

It is in this moment that his pulse pounds in his ears to the point of careening as he second guesses himself entirely.

He didn’t really think it over much before retrieving it; he just didn’t want her to be stuck waiting outside his door if he’s out by the time she comes back with soup or medicine. He dimly soaks in that this is possibly a bigger deal than his somnolent mind is capable of fully processing just now.

“...If I’m asleep,” he expounds expeditiously, voice marginally hesitant now as he begins to overthink, a sliver of rationality cutting through the haze of fatigue and settling in the form of presage just behind his ribs. Suddenly it feels like there’s something poring through the soil there, disturbing vines and dirt and roots, scrutinizing them afore flinging them away carelessly with the aid of a rusted spade.

They’ve barely been together for two months. Perhaps he has vastly overstepped, made her uncomfortable-

“Okay,” she says as her expression morphs into a shy smile, palm brushing his to take the key.

Once his pulse finds its place again, no longer rushing and echoing in his ears like a torrent of an alarm, he slowly lets go of the sleek metal. Sakura’s eyes are filled with something that looks an awful lot like awe, fractals of seafoam atop a shifting reflected fluorescent light.

Her soft fingers are, as ever, incredibly distracting as they slide away, nimble and graceful. She’s out the door in a few seconds, a sweet-natured glance cast back in his direction before she turns. The door creaks open and closed, and the latch clicks softly behind her.

She locks it for him, eternally polite.

He blinks once, staring at the wood grain for a lingering moment in advance of rotating to land his study on the bag of cough drops.

A feeling is settling somewhat behind his ribs that is rather nice, twisting vines and disturbed roots and other things he’s entombed pushed neatly back into place, utterly at odds with his physical afflictions.

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Several hours pass, more half-formed thoughts a rippling gradient in his subconscious that are not given quite enough time to begin to stew, along with strange scraping noises that filter in and out of his skull.

He eventually blinks groggily to the aroma of chicken soup invading his olfactory senses. It effectively fades the blur of cinereal to simple off white plaster, and he rolls out of bed rather unceremoniously. His headache is at least a little better, he finds, though the dryness in his mouth is not. He gulps down some of the stagnant water in the glass astride his bedside from earlier. He then proceeds to his doorway with it in hand, pushing the door open.

Sakura is stirring soup in what appears to be the slow cooker from her kitchen he was recalling a short time ago, brought here. Savory roasted shiitake mushrooms and sliced green cabbage intermix with the scent now that he’s closer, and she turns to the soft click of the door opening and closing.

“Sasuke-kun,” she greets in a hushed tone with kind eyes, smiling. “You’re awake.”

“...Sakura,” he says in response, somewhat disoriented.

“Your strep test was positive,” she murmurs, turning back to the pot to tap the remaining moisture off the ladle before setting the lid back atop the soup. “I brought you an antibiotic; it’s on the table. Eye ointment, too.”

His focus sinks to the table, and sure enough there are two medications: a tube of ointment that’s labeled Bacitracin Ophthalmic Ointment and a small bottle of pills that reads No. 860015-5578, Uchiha, Sasuke, Penicillin 500mg, Take twice daily. Quantity: 20 tablets. Dr. Haruno, Sakura - No refills.

There is a lengthy moment in which he stares at the clear orange container. His vision adjusts lethargically, lingering on the material transparency, the way it colors the stark white pills contained within it. There is a scattering of seconds where the air momentarily feels crisper in his lungs, harder to respire.

“Thank you,” he finally responds, cutting through the haze of his own thoughts as cleanly as a swipe of his chokuto can cleave through paper. He exchanges his glass of water for the garishly bright container, using his teeth to rotate the lid off.

“You’re welcome,” Sakura acknowledges to his left, reaching for cutlery and beginning to fill the sink, apparently to soak the dishes. Now that he's fully awake, he sees that the cutting board is among them. She must have added a few things to the mix just after arriving here for the final additions to the soup.

“Just make sure to finish the whole thing, even when you start feeling better.” She smiles at him. “In twenty-four hours, you won’t be contagious anymore, either, so you can return to normal life if you’re feeling up to it.”

Lone pill popped into his mouth, he reaches for what’s left of his water. It drags along his throat, scraping irritated tissue; it takes a few more gulps of water to force it all the way down, effectively draining his glass. He shoves away his disdain for the feeling.

“...You don’t need to wash those,” Sasuke says quietly, frowning as he rounds the table, intent on obtaining a new glass of water. “I’ll do it later.”

Fine pink brows arch, then furrow furrow as he places it on the counter nearest the fridge. She’s peering at him as if he’s grown another head.

“Of course I will,” Sakura insists, expression confused. “You're sick, and I dirtied them. After dinner, though.”

His frown sinks deeper, pursuance of the water pitcher in the fridge momentarily forgotten.

“...You’ll get sick.”

There is an enduring pause where she appraises him carefully, as if he’s said something completely nonsensical.

"I… don’t think you need to worry about that,” she finally replies, cheeks flushing a little as she swipes her hand across her skirt once to dry it. They fidget there, bunching in the violet fabric. “You probably got it from me.”

His brows furrow as his fingers rest atop the fridge handle. Briefly she meets his eyes, and her cheeks darken further.

Ah.

He angles his vision momentarily in the direction of the counter, studying the pattern in an attempt at distraction from the acute sensation of flame licking up his neck.

"...Wouldn't you be sick, too?"

Sakura shakes her head in his peripheral vision.

“Well-” She begins, then stops. “Well… I mean technically, I have it, but… I’m mostly asymptomatic. I had a small fever when I checked, running your test, so I did one of my own and it was positive; I’m taking an antibiotic, too . Group A strep has never really given me symptoms other than that, though. And…” She pauses long enough to pique his curiosity, so he meets her stare.

Her cheeks are incarnadine, but her countenance is more akin to apologetic than embarrassment. Her fingers are still restless at her sides.

“I had a patient with strep come in on Tuesday. Group A has a two to five day incubation period, so… Relatively sure that you caught it from me."

Slowly Sasuke nods, and she smiles, but then she turns in a way he can only describe as meek, back to the dishes as if searching for something new to keep her hands occupied.

“So… take this as my apology for getting you sick,” she quips, speaking in a rather regretful tone, one that quickens with every word she speaks, aflush with offers that he immediately clocks as being laden with some sort of misplaced guilt. He’s struck by the tired, absurd notion to laugh, because Sakura is the last person who should ever be apologizing to him.

“Is there anything I can take care of for you? I could bring some new books, if you’d like. If you’ve finished your other ones, I mean. Or… I don’t have to eat here, if you’re too tired. I can come get the slow cooker later if it’s easier for you to heat it up that way. Maybe when you’re feeling better? And-”

“Sakura,” he murmurs, carefully placing his lone hand on her bicep, and she quiets instantaneously, pupils honed in on his.

“...I don’t mind being sick.” The words are out of his mouth before he can overthink them, but they’re true and enunciated as clearly as he is capable; he doesn’t mind at all. He would take being ill again a hundred times over if it means he gets to spend the amount of hours with her he’s been able to recently, and furthermore, to kiss her, like that. There’s a comfort in it, similar to the comfort of seeing her in his apartment for a third occasion or the amenity that comes with someone you love offering to eat soup with you when you’re ill, despite the weather outside being blazing.

It’s arduous for him to voice such things, but he hopes she can understand through his expression alone, as she often can.

I want you here.

Her pupils have widened to the size of saucers, a thin slice of jade green circling their edges just so.

“Oh,” she intones faintly. She peers down to where his hand is still resting, curved gently around her arm, and her face flushes darker somehow. The corner of his mouth twitches; she really is utterly oblivious to what her touch does to him and his pulse, yet is endearingly affected by his touch on her in any way, shape, or form, innocent as it may be.

“...Good.” She says it with what sounds a little like relief, and the spell is broken; he lets his fingers fall away as she reaches to turn off the faucet, sink now brimming with suds and hot water. “We should probably eat, then.”

Sasuke dips his chin once in agreement, reaching to obtain the bowls from a nearby cabinet. He ladles out large servings for both Sakura and himself, more content now that he knows she’s not getting exposed to illness unnecessarily on his behalf. Similarly to the last occasion she made soup, the pot is full to brimming; there will be plenty of leftovers for tomorrow, or tonight, should he wake again or have trouble sleeping in the first place. He’s hungry, he realizes; he didn’t eat lunch. In fact, he has to side-eye the clock to see what the time actually is just now: a few minutes prior to five, the continuance of their newly adjusted meal schedule.

Sakura reaches into the silverware drawer while he oscillates in the small space. Her bowl in hand, he crosses the kitchen to deliver it to the table, placing it in the same spot she sat the previous time she was here for dinner. He embarks on a second trip back for his own, during which Sakura deposits their silverware in their respective spots.

She’s heading back to the kitchen for some reason as he sets his bowl down, the sound of the fridge opening at his back. When he glances her way in question, his gaze softens, because he realizes she’s taking the water pitcher out to fill his glass, forgotten on the counter.

“Would you like some tea?” Sakura questions as she pours, vision colliding with his briefly. “I know you don’t like sweet things, but I brought some honey in my bag; a little might help your throat until the antibiotics kick in. If I brew the sencha strong enough and just use a bit, you probably won’t taste it.”

He shoots her a look that he hopes communicates his appreciation, nodding, before he turns to the table, transiently trying to place what’s missing. His point of study flickers to the eye ointment, then to her bag.

“There’s some in the cupboard,” he mentions absentmindedly, slightly hoarse, wondering if he should apply the ointment now or if it would make him look stupid for dinner. He doesn’t really want irritated eyes - they’re itching a bit, again - but he also doesn’t want them caked with gunk while Sakura’s still here.

“Tea?” She questions with a curious tone. He hears running water from the faucet begin anew, plunking levelly into the saucepan.

“Honey,” he clarifies, distrait before he finally pieces together that the lamp is still in the living room from earlier. He crosses the breadth of the apartment to collect the light source, unplugging it from the outlet nearest the end table.

It’s not until he’s back at the edge of the kitchen, hooking the lamp’s cord into the outlet and flooding the space with softer light, that he realizes silence is still reigning and Sakura hasn't moved an inch.

Sasuke shoots her an inquisitive look, raising an eyebrow as he slides the light flush with the wall atop the table, next to his stack of library books.

“Honey?” Sakura echoes finally, and his unthinking admission catches him.

Calidity blooms on his neck, blistering all the way up to his ears and rushing through the twisted pathways of his veins.

“...Yes,” he mumbles after extensive pause, implication clear and body resolutely still until Sakura turns toward the cupboard with a perplexed expression. It reminds him of the look on her face when he proceeds with a move she clearly didn’t expect him to whilst hours into a match of chess or go: a black piece waltzing willingly into her reach only to parry away in the next turn, if she doesn’t seize it in favor of the continuance of her own strategic maneuvering.

He supposes this is no exception. Sasuke seizes the opportunity to grab the ointment and noiselessly escapes to his bathroom to apply it. The only sound is the open and shut of his bedroom door behind him, a duet of soft clicks.

He takes his time, washing his hand thoroughly and tilting his head back to apply the cool ointment into the small pocket behind the lower lash line of each eye. It’s a bit of a challenge to accomplish the task one-handed without touching the tip of the applicator directly to his corneas - it’s not something he’s done since gaining his handicap, really - but he manages by pulling the skin out with two fingers and holding the tube with the other three. Closing his eyes is a welcome distraction, rolling them in their sockets to distribute the ointment throughout, as it says on the back of the tube not to rub at them with one’s fingers.

After washing his hand a second time, he examines himself for a long moment in the mirror. They don’t look too bad, though the typical white sclera is pretty pink, more clearly afflicted after a few hours of sleep in which the bacteria could apparently fester untreated.

His skin tone has mostly returned to normal, save his neck; he dislikes the slight tinge of a flush that’s hovering stubbornly at his cervical spine, refusing to concede to his will.

Following a deep breath and another minute’s passing, Sasuke crosses the divide of his bedroom and returns to the dining table to the tone of two more mild and muted clicks, gaze shifting to Sakura as soon as he’s carefully drawn the door closed. She’s shut the kitchen light off, it appears; her back is to him, white circle emblazoned brightly across the space between her shoulder blades, but the water is steaming in the saucepan atop the stove, and she’s fastidiously scooping out a vestigial amount of what appears to be the lavender Earl Gray mixture into his lone tea infuser.

There’s a small part of him that’s relieved. It had seemed like something she would like, though he’d picked up a jar each of the loose leaf decaffeinated matcha and the caffeinated peach, too, as well as a modest container of the shop’s honey. He wanted enough variety that she could have tea here no matter what time of the day it is. Sakura’s apartment is vastly superior to his own in terms of variety of things to do, and he hadn’t been sure if she would want to come by again, but it’s good to be prepared, and he’d reasoned that if she didn’t, he could simply deposit the jars and honey discreetly into her contraband drawer sometime.

The scent of sencha overwhelms his nostrils as he sits, intermixing with the aroma of the soup. A mug filled with it is placed next to his bowl; she brewed his first, it seems. He takes to the distraction of food and drink rapidly, bringing a spoonful of the soup to his mouth.

It’s just as excellent as the last time. He savors the way it soothes his throat even as his neck continues in its rogue goal of staying stubbornly blazing. Hearty chunks of chicken, noodles, and a minuscule mushroom slide down his esophagus, drenching everything in a different heat, one that’s relieving. He takes a sip from the mug, after, and it’s definitely stronger than he usually prepares it, but he can't taste the honey much, as she said.

He's alarmed when a muffled sniffle intermixes with the sound of jars being picked up and pushed back into the cupboard. Sasuke watches Sakura uncertainly out of the corner of his vision as she closes the front of the cabinet, and sure enough, she brings one of her hands to her face as if to wipe tears from her eyes.

Now it’s guilt that runs aflame down his spine like a fuse, though this time it burrows sharp into his gut. It wasn’t at all his intention to make her cry.

He experiences a grand moment of internal conflict as he returns his gaze to the table, torn between rising to his feet to do something akin to wiping her tears away clumsily - her name is on the tip of his tongue - and staying put to cede her privacy, as it’s possible she didn’t want him to see that she was crying; she turned the kitchen light off herself, after all. He also doesn’t know if she’s taking anything for conjunctivitis; he washed his hand well, but he doesn’t want to chance giving it to her if she doesn’t have it already.

The remaining water in the saucepan creates a small echo as it’s poured into a cup, shortly followed by a spoon chiming against ceramic as it stirs the contents; then, there are soft footsteps.

“Sakura-”

He is saved from the decision in short order. At his left, she shifts his hair away from his eye and cheekbone with solicitous gentleness prior to pressing her lips there. They linger longer than they have in the past, achingly tender.

“That was sweet of you,” she breathes as her lips depart his skin, voice a little shaky. Even through his fever, the warmth sears him, drizzling down his lungs on the inhale and into his heart. “Thank you.”

When she takes her seat across from him, he sees that her eyes are glassy, reflectant in the lamplight and tempered with such love that it makes him ache.

The dinner is drawn out, yet comfortably quiet in the way that many of their shared meals tend to be. Spoons clink against ceramic bowls and the inside of Sakura’s cup as she stirs her brewing tea. Mugs are raised and lowered, occupying paltry and ever-shifting circumferences. Sasuke puts away two helpings to the tune of it, the soft rhythms of shared life. His throat feels a bit less like sandpaper by the conclusion of it.

“I’d like to check on you tomorrow, too,” Sakura says once they’ve done the dishes and stowed the leftover soup in his refrigerator, carrying over the routine they’ve fallen into at her place just as easily here. She’s standing near his doorway with her bag shrugged over her shoulder, sandals pulled on and twisting the spare key nervously in her fingers at her side.

“Okay,” he murmurs, glimpsing pointedly in the direction of her hand, then back to her to show he understands what she’s asking him. She can keep it as far as he’s concerned - it’s not like he has any use for it, anyway, and he knows Sakura is nothing if not cognizant and respectful of his boundaries, possibly overly so - but perhaps that’s a conversation for tomorrow.

“Okay,” she agrees, flashing him a dazzling smile. Her digits close around the key more surely, fidgeting coming to a standstill as her dimple sinks into existence.

There is an expectant pause where there is usually some sort of kissing, but even if they’re both on the antibiotic, his mouth still tinges with a little dryness now that he’s not consuming some sort of hot liquid. Coughing all over her is the last thing he wants to do.

Sakura exhales slowly. “Well… I’ll see you tomorrow, Sasuke-kun. Good night.”

“...Good night.”

Sasuke stays rooted by the door once she’s gone, lock long since clicked into place for him a second time and her visage burned into his retinas. Torpidly, carefully, he presses his forehead to the cool wood of the threshold.

How is it possible for someone’s mere presence to transform a space in such a way?

He would have been terribly bored - irritated, even - in his apartment alone this evening, and he knows as sure as the sky is blue that any soup he crafted alone wouldn’t have tasted half as good as what Sakura prepared for him.

Reasonably, Sasuke is aware that such things are possible, though he learned that lesson the first time in reverse. He recalls it vividly as he traipses to the memorial stone to water what he’s planted, the way in which someone’s absence robs a house, a backyard, an entire district of all joy.

He shrugs off his shirt once he’s sojourned back home in favor of doubling up on his comforters; the top was coated in sweat from the humid walk. Both blankets are clean currently, he reasons, and if he has them, he might as well use them.

The sheets are cool to his skin initially, a nice feeling against his still fevered skin as he suspected they might be. The blankets enwrap him comfortably, endlessly warm.

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Sometimes Sasuke contemplates what happens after people die. He’s dreamed about it often, ensnared in nightmares of eighty-six bodies or otherwise: if it hurts or if it’s peaceful, like sinking into sleep, and if there is something after all of this. He perceives that there is some truth to reincarnation from their encounter with the Sage of the Six Paths, and that has set him slightly to ease, in the sense that in some liminal way his clan lives on: his brother, his mother and his father, his aunt and uncle, and the rest.

It has also given him additional questions, though. Does part of their soul stay adrift endlessly, clutching their memories like a keepsake to their chest, a threaded nexus tied to their previous life? Or does the spirit depart completely into their next existence, flitting to the most fitting and available vessel to embark on a new annal? The thought of his mother not remembering him or the lilies in their backyard makes his chest ache terribly, brittle and easily broken, and Itachi forgetting him is another agony entirely.

He also wonders if part of their memories could be geographical, tethered haphazardly in pieces to places they loved in life. He knows his Aunt Uruchi loved the bakery with its smell of toasting senbei and pastries. He suspects Itachi enjoyed the bakery, too, with his affinity for dango and other sweet things. He vaguely recalls a festival when they were very young in which they polished off twenty multicolored sticks together and ended up with bellyaches. They’d used the wooden remains to construct a form reminiscent of a simplistic house, lantern glow illuminating the scant lines in the dark, ephemeral and easily ended when it came time to collect them and embark on the journey home.

Sasuke likes to think Itachi also enjoyed the pond he took him to occasionally, the wildflowers they picked to take home for their mother, and the resultant scent of budding blooms that lilted through hallways with dark floors on those handfuls of occasions, intermingling with the scent of their salt-grilled catch come dinner. He knows his mother loved their yard, and their kitchen, too, lilting with freshly brewed jasmine tea in the morning or the quiet din of family once everyone sat down for a formal meal. His mother plucked a bone from his mouth once, a small one he’d nearly swallowed. He remembers her softspoken instructions to be more careful, voice comforting as she reached to the back of his throat methodically with tweezers in the soft light of early evening.

But he is not sure of the sorts of places his father liked, or if there even were any, and that compels worse hurt. Thinking of his father is bruising and convoluted in general, as there is much Sasuke would like to know of him, and further he would like to say to him - most of it, should it ever bubble out of his lungs to be lost in the interminable abyss, is anger - but he was so closed off in life that Sasuke can only wonder aimlessly in his death. His mother was the only person who truly knew his father at his core, he thinks, silent as he was and unyielding in his convictions. He mulls on whether their marriage was truly happy or if that was colored darker by the planned coup, too. He cognizes that his mother likely spent her final days sick with worry about that; Uchiha Mikoto was a caring woman, everything he could have asked for in a mother.

It makes Sasuke doubly furious with him. Didn't he know the risks, what it would mean for the children of their clan if they failed? It is no easy thing, to stumble over the bodies of their ilk again and again and again, the Uchiha children, adolescents and toddlers and one newborn, desperately clutched by a cowering mother in an alley, drained white and nauseatingly pallid, and he still can’t get their faces out of his mind, the way their noses were identical when viewed from the side as he lurched over them in his cowering, tripped-

Stop.

It also makes him furious with Konoha, the most bellicostic he’s been in a long while since the Land of Iron a year ago when he last dreamed this dream, passing through and revisiting his greatest failures, Danzou and the fucking council that forced this further cataclysm of an already cursed lineage on him. Didn't they know annexing an entire clan and letting wounds fester would lead to spilled blood eventually? What the fuck is the point of a village, of shared civilization, if its malfeasant corruption gorges itself on the innocent over and over and over? There is only so much one can take of their life boiling away in their veins with untempered rage until they snap -

Not their blood , a grotesque susurrus inside him whispers, one that envisions the aspostates that signed his clan’s death warrant and one he has desperately tried to drought out of existence to be replaced with better things over the past couple of years: Kakashi’s particular brand of cutting and commiserate wisdom that lingers years after he’s spoken it, Naruto’s relentless optimism and the sense of vying brotherhood that reminds him of Itachi ad finitum - You’re trying to be alone again and I can’t let that happen! - Sakura’s unwavering kindness and altruistic affection - What if I said… I’d go with you? - the feel of her seal against the tips of his outstretched fingers, her soft lips against his as she threads her fingers through his hair, the way the jasmine plant dangling above her window warps a perfect chiaroscuro to frame the freckle on her cheek once the sun has sunk below the horizon just so -

Not their blood, so why would they care?

Take notice of what light does, to everyth-

Corrosion-

For now, for now, for now-

Yes, Sasuke likes to think his years away changed him in at least some marginally minute way. Yet his subconscious returns him to this place cyclically to reread moribund chapters, the single lone instance in which he thought maybe, just maybe, his father was proud of him. He’s still searching for answers that will never come, from a man he has come to realize he holds a monumental amount of resentment towards.

He almost doesn’t wish to contemplate this, as he recognizes it is ages away and much can happen between now and then - and also he is utterly undeserving and woefully ill-suited to care for a child, both physically and otherwise - but if he is ever blessed enough to someday be granted one, he does not want to be like his father. He doesn’t want to perpetuate this sort of aimlessness, the weight of expectation and a mentality of being a slave to blood. This gloom and despondency and misplaced pride will be his end as it was Fugaku's, he knows, if he doesn't rinse the wound out on occasion, acutely feel its sting, its agony.

In this anamnesis, he is barefoot on a dock as he always is, tiny feet placed firmly atop a thin dusting of snow. Orange flames spout from his mouth, chapping his lips, crowning gold and climbing higher and higher into the brumous sky as his throat dries with the heat and amelioration, a thin veiling of illusory safety that was everything to him when he was small and alone and desperate for some sense of control, grasping at straws.

When he turns, coughing from the smoke and faintest remnant of crushed pills pelted into his eyes by bitter winds, he half expects even now to hear the lone set of words from his father that he has tried to replay in his head thousands of times.

As expected of my son. The only way the words live on is via an echo of Sasuke’s own voice speaking them into existence again. He can remember the visuals perfectly with near photographic recall, the day that his father told him that: the ripe fever of life and late summer, the rippling of the leaves a stark contrast to the chill that haunts him in this overplayed dream where he clutches an emptied and mangled marigold prescription bottle. He watches now with his brother’s eyes as he throws it skyward and torches his own name out of existence with the last of his chakra, all of seven years old.

He can perfectly recall his mother's lilting halcyon inflection - When we're alone, all he talks about is you - and he can remember both of his brother's last words to him - I'm sorry, Sasuke. This is the last time , and No matter what happens from now on, I will love you forever -

But he cannot for the life of him remember what his father’s voice sounded like; not the inflection, nor the tone or tenor. It was the only time it ever felt like he held an ounce of affection for him, fleeting and gone the next hour. He only remembers the way their family crest looked as he said it, presented to him boldly as his father turned away from him.

And isn’t that just the richest metaphor? He fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

He doesn't know what it says about him, but he assumes it's nothing good. The phrase inferiority complex has crossed his mind on many such occasions. As he has aged, he's reviewed it with fresh eyes, and wondered if it was all an act, some passing dalliance to satisfy his mother. Shinobi are capable liars, and he knows his father was one of the best. It would be easy for him to feign the mirage of happiness about saying such things.

What would his father’s face have betrayed? Would there have been any certitude had he caught up with him on the walk home instead of trailing a few steps behind in his shadow? Uchiha Fugaku was not a man who smiled often. Conversely, his mouth was wrinkled from being set in a frown so regularly that there was a permanent line just below his lip. Sasuke deems he himself will expediently encounter an identical issue as he ages, though primarily he also believes both he and Itachi took more after their mother, physically. He sees her nose each time he views himself tiredly in the mirror. Her eye shape, too, and the inky black hair, a shade darker than their father’s.

It will be fitting, he thinks, he knows, to watch his mother’s agreeable features bleed out of him and reveal what he’s always been.

It would hurt her deeply, if she heard that thought.

He loathes that about himself.

He loathes a lot of things about himself.

There is no one behind him to offer platitudes or words of encouragement in this particular brand of dream; there never is. The dock of the pond within the Uchiha District and the shore surrounding it, just around the corner of another dead relative’s house, is empty, packed with a fresh dusting of snow and charred blue particles. The wind is blowing, though, almighty chilling and true, making branches ripple in the zephyr as it carries away the gray and the meager amount of heat he's created with it. He outgrew his coat that first winter, and his shoes, too.

“Where did you go?” He is compelled to ask, intonation a scant whisper against slate air rippling as if this whole thing is an illusion - Am I caught in Tsukuyomi again? - but there is no answer. That used to terrify him when he was much younger; he had been afraid his father was trapped in the childlike depiction of hell he’d conjured up in his brain, and that that was why he couldn’t really recollect the way he spoke, the gruffness or whether his voice was tenor or bass.

He returns to land, taking extra care of his steps, and wonders, if nothing else, if the earth will remember his bare feet, a sign that he’s still here, sinking through the snow and other remnants that divide them.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

He awakens to the smell of tea and rice and something else. It’s disorienting, tumultuary, the feel of a warm blanket at his toes and soft noises clinking from the kitchen when just prior there had been cold snow and acutely lonely roads. It distracts him a bit from the morose stinging in his eyes, enough that he can rapidly blink it away, forcibly shrugging off the melancholy as if it was nothing more than a weighty winter cloak, ushered over his shoulders like the layer of his second comforter and pushed back down deep.

“...Sakura?” He calls once he’s been awake for a minute, speech cracking a little at the last syllable, still groggy as he sits up in bed and promptly regrets that decision; the change in position triggers a fresh pounding in his head, aching thumping at his temple as his blood rushes. He reaches for the water at his bedside table with first his left arm, a phantom sensation echoing in empty space before he remembers to use his right.

There is the sound of soft footsteps as he gulps down tepid liquidity, and then a tentative knock at his bedroom door.

“Sasuke-kun?” Her voice resounds faintly from the other side of the wood, as if she’s unsure if she actually heard him call her name.

He blinks, unsure what the hold-up is, then realizes through the fever and rapidly materializing headache that she’s being polite.

“...You can come in.”

The knob turns, and in she comes, very much awake and wearing what he now recognizes as her summer training gear, the cropped top and short skirt framed by dark transparent mesh. He pointedly takes notice of the clock, then, for multiple reasons that are all overshadowed by the fact that his internal monologue has undertaken a fatuously lascivious turn, greedily seeking distraction and here in his bedroom, no less. He then puts together that it’s still somewhat early, only six thirty; she's dropped by to prepare breakfast before her spar with Ino.

For him.

He tries to get a grip on the warmth that’s nudging at his heart, insistent in its beckoning. It’s not like it’s the first time she’s made him food, but he knows she’s occupied on Mondays till after lunch. She’s gone out of her way to do such a kindness for him, added additional things to her schedule.

“Hey-” she says softly as he turns back to her; she’s taking a step toward him with a mug of what appears to be steaming water and the pill bottle he left on the table. He stares at the marigold plastic, slightly desaturated and less contrasting here in the darkness of his room. “Er. I mean… Good morning. I was up early, and I… I thought I’d make you breakfast.”

He nods slowly as his eyes prick at her sweetness. Now that the door’s sitting open, he would recognize the aroma of ochazuke anywhere. He’s never directly voiced to anyone that it’s one of his favorite breakfasts, though he supposes it’s rather easy to piece together that he would like it given his other food preferences. He made it several times when they were away on missions as Genin, too.

Still. In addition to all of the other qualities that encompass who she is, Sakura is as observant as she is kind.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, heart swelling with the relief of being cared for, simple and true, even as his throat aches and his head pounds.

Her lips tilt upwards into a smile, and it is then that he notices, pulled back to normalcy and something providential that’s swelling in his chest, finally tearing his vision away from the pill bottle, that her cheeks are bright red for some reason; the light from the cracked door has her illuminated.

“Of course.” Her focus falls to the glass of stale water he’s put back on his bedside table, then the mug in her hands. “Want me to..?”

Sasuke nods prior to repeating himself. “Thank you.” His words come out raspy and raw.

She pays it no mind, still smiling with scarlet cheeks as she places both the mug and the pill bottle on the surface, taking the glass in exchange. “Of course,” she murmurs, meeting his gaze briefly prior to his reaching for the pill bottle.

“I’ll… um. I’ll go… watch the rice,” she stammers as he sets to opening the lid with his teeth. She turns to go, then pauses, casting her focus back at him, though the trajectory of her eyesight seems directed mainly at the area above his head. “Do you still like ochazuke? I thought, maybe…” She trails off and purses her mouth as he finally pries off the lid, setting it aside.

“I do,” Sasuke discloses immediately, pausing in his ministration of procuring a pill from the bottle, as he recognizes the tone of her voice and the expression she’s wearing as being betwixt and between, unsure of her assumptions or his availability for breakfast together when ill, or, perhaps, uncertain if she’s welcome in his room. “I have it often. Thank you.”

Her posture relaxes completely and any uncertainty dissolves.

“Oh,” she breathes, lips curving upwards. “Good.” She lingers a second longer, jade eyes soft on his directly before she turns and trails out of his bedroom, closing the door behind her.

He stares at the threshold for a lengthy spread of seconds, thinking. He then turns slightly to try to ascertain what she was looking at above and behind him - perhaps some sort of spider managed to entrench the corner with a few spools of web in the night - but there’s nothing he can discern aside from the small amount of texture coating the walls.

Perplexed, he reaches for the mug, pill bottle placed atop the blanket in his lap. A measured sip floods the pill down first, drenching his insides in blessed heat and ease. It feels so incredibly good on his throat that he quickly drains the cup. It does nothing for his head, he realizes once he shifts slightly, extending his arm to place the mug, then the pill bottle, back at his bedside.

A pause to alleviate the pounding has him locking his gaze onto the inscription on the bottle’s label.

Uchiha, Sasuke.

Haruno, Sakura.

He muses less than fleetingly on empty space, the ever-changing weight of melancholia, and the way the earth feels beneath one’s feet.

Turns out that rising doesn’t do much for his head, either, but he does it anyway, padding first to the closet for a change of clothes.

It is then that he promptly recalls that he did not wear a shirt to bed. His face warms at the quandary, realizing he directly invited his girlfriend into his bedroom while half-dressed.

In addition to a little self-consciousness, satisfaction begins to unfold in his belly, because he gathers, unraveling and rewinding the interaction for closer examination, that Sakura was definitely not unaffected.

He journeys to the bathroom to apply the eye ointment and brush his teeth thoroughly before joining Sakura for breakfast, shaking off this new development that he’s sure will beset his dreams the next time he’s asleep and his endocrine system decides to torture him.

Sakura, still red-cheeked, makes ochazuke with nori instead of sesame seeds, he learns.

He finds he likes it better.

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He drifts back to sleep with a full stomach, slipping away into genuine rest in the hopes of cowing his fever, and with it, his headache, into submission until the early afternoon.

This sleep is dreamless, deep and paradisiacally empty aside from a strange clunking noise or two, no room for ruminating on the nature of omneity and complexes.

It’s a sign that the antibiotic is working that he awakens as he hears the key twist in the door. He’s tired, but not as much as earlier this morning or yesterday. His throat is less dry, too, he realizes.

He then sits up in bed and promptly discovers that he still has a headache.

“Sakura,” he calls lowly, just loud enough to be heard through the door as he blinks, vision adjusting to the light now that he’s pushed aside the blankets that were previously encasing his head in darkness.

“Sasuke-kun,” she answers. There’s the sound of an object being placed on the table before she raps on his bedroom door twice.

You don’t need to knock, he would say if the events of earlier this morning had not come rushing back to him.

“Come in,” he says instead. He has a shirt on this time, at least.

The door pushes open.

“Hi,” Sakura greets, regard settling on him fully after only a second of delay at the empty space above his head. Her hair is damp and she’s switched into a different set of clothing. There’s an expression on her face that’s hard to describe as anything but dotingly affectionate. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to wake you.”

He shakes his head, eyes finally adjusting to the light. “...I should get up.”

She grins for some reason. “You should,” she agrees, her countenance filled with levity.

He arches a lone brow in question, at which she chuckles, soft.

“Naruto gave me lunch to deliver to you,” she informs him, looking utterly amused. “And you’ll never guess from where.”

Sasuke exhales heavily, rolling his eyes prior to shifting to rise and promptly pausing at what it does to his head. He apparently doesn’t succeed in minimizing his wincing; before he can continue with the motion, he sees her smile morph unmistakably into concern.

“...Do you have a headache?” She questions softly after a lengthy quiet, stepping away from the door frame and closer to his bed. “I can fix it,” she adds, just prior to halting a foot away.

He blinks up at her, immediately reaching the conclusion that he’s been incredibly stupid. Of course she can fix headaches. It just… didn’t occur to him to remember that, or to ask. Conceivably it could be the fever, clouding his judgment.

“Just… if you want,” she tacks on hastily, fingers twitching at her sides. He realizes she’s holding herself back from reaching for him without his express consent.

Sasuke nods, then, just once, but very sure.

“...Please,” he whispers, shifting more so that he’s closer to the edge of the bed. Her fingers stop their anxious repetitions as his feet finally shift to the floor, upper body now easy for her to reach.

He contemplates if this oblivion of chartreuse and charcoal will ever cease in making his affection for her feel like it’s overflowing from a teacup filled to the brim. Sakura’s expression is unendingly soft and a bantam smile plays at her lips as she closes the rest of the distance between them, fingers coming to rest expertly at his temples. Ten points of contact coalesce as she threads her chakra into his being, alleviating the pressure from whatever sort of swelling causes such headaches slowly but surely.

He maintains eye contact with her this time - she’s so short that he’s nearly eye-level with her while sitting - studying the small nacreous circle of jade and tilleul at the outer edges of her iris; the black of her pupils have expanded to fit nearly the entire contents of the space, but there are still microscopic flecks of gold here and there that catch the light. It’s challenging to pull himself back from activating his Sharingan to capture the way she’s looking at him just now. The convolution of tomoe could etch it into his memories perfectly, he knows.

He concludes that she’s studying his eyes, too, or rather, his brother’s. He wonders silently if they appear terribly different from his own eyes, close up. Sakura’s observant; she might be able to discern if there is any noticeable variance from when they were younger, enough to demarcate between the old ones and the new.

Eventually her chakra tapers and her fingers trail away.

“Better?” She questions.

It feels as if his heart is in his throat when he answers.

“Better.” He holds her gaze for a moment longer, exhaling contentedly and struck stupid with the urge to pull her closer to him so he can breathe in more of her scent. “Thank you.”

Her lips curve upwards, and he wants to kiss her badly.

“You’re welcome,” she says, grinning and biting her lip once.

She then surprises him by leaning in, apparently overcome by the same inclination as him. It’s a chaste kiss, achingly slow and gentle, unmarred from the pressure that’s been plaguing his head. Her lashes slide against the highest point of his cheekbones.

Her cheeks are ablaze when she finally pulls back, darker in color than her hair.

“You… should probably eat it while it’s still warm,” she reasons quietly, smile guilty.

“...Probably,” he agrees, taking in the green of her irises one more time before tearing his ocularity away.

He rises to trail after her to the dining table, where he finds a to-go container of ramen. The clear lid of the styrofoam container has been haphazardly carved into sloppy handwriting, he assumes by way of the tip of a kunai.

Sorry. Get better soon, asshole.

-Naruto!

The tail end lettering of the word asshole drifts down the side of the container onto the styrofoam, as the moron clearly ran out of room to finish off his sloppy scrawl. Sasuke resists the urge to shake his head, settling for rolling his eyes instead.

It's a nice gesture, he supposes as examines the soup through the transparent lid: there’s broth swimming with noodles, seared chicken, and chunks of spring onions and mushrooms. His brow furrows and he looks up, then, to Sakura.

"...You already ate?" He questions. Her slow cooker is still on his counter, the pot laden with soup from yesterday in his fridge.

"With Ino," Sakura confirms. "Naruto caught me walking to the library and ran to go get it."

He blinks, curious that she’s visited the library. He doesn’t suppose she’s been there much on her own since he returned; they usually go together. He’ll need to return his own books in the next week or two, come to think of it, since he’s finished the one on the Land of Tea now. It’s sitting next to the lamp on the kitchen table, stacked on top of Art From Around the World . Sakura’s tote bag is lying there, too.

“I think I convinced him to push our movie night to next week,” Sakura offers; apparently his face belied his curiosity. “Ino said Sai was wondering if you’d finished the art book; he finished the one you recommended.”

Sasuke nods. “...I did.” He decides to keep his books until next week, then, if Sakura’s already exchanged hers. He can reread one of them to keep busy, since he feels more awake today. He’d rather go with Sakura than alone anyways, and then he can take it to Sakura’s for the movie. He’s mildly curious what sort of strange comment Sai will have on the book about kenjutsu.

It would probably be fine to voice that, he decides. “...I’ll bring it to the movie.”

Sakura grins at him in response, before her body language morphs into that which belies bashfulness.

“So… Do you feel any better today?” She questions quietly, seemingly searching his expression for something. “Or do you need more sleep, do you think?”

He blinks, searching her own in return.

“I’m awake,” he finally answers honestly, chest warming at the tone in which she asked the question. He recognizes the way she speaks, timid and almost unsure, as the way she acts when she’s about to suggest they do something together, though she shouldn’t be. There are few things that he wouldn’t agree to if they involve her.

“...Better now with no headache,” he adds gratefully after a moment in which she appears to wait patiently for an answer to the other part of his question; it’s hard for him to focus on words when it feels as though his chest is unfurling behind his ribs, flooded with warmth and metaphorical sunshine. It’s the truth, besides; the only thing plaguing him at the moment is the minor hint of a dry throat, which will ease after he eats the ramen from the dobe.

“...I’m glad,” Sakura murmurs after a sustained pause in which he gathers that she’s contemplative. Her gaze flicks to her tote bag on the table for some reason, and then she’s reaching into her pocket, and out comes the key.

“I’ll give this back to you, then,” she says softly, smiling as she presents the flash of nickel-brass to him with an open palm, its polished sheen bathed in light drifting from the living room window. Her focus shifts to her tote bag again briefly. “And I was thinking…”

He reaches out silently, vastly enjoying the way her eyes widen as he presses her fingers back around the key with his own. He holds them like that for a second to emphasize his unmitigated insistence, enjoying the warmth of a hand dwarfed by his own. He momentarily wishes for his other arm, so he could use it to press her fingers in place, too.

“Keep it,” Sasuke counters in a husky voice, amused at the way her mouth has parted in surprise and simultaneously looking forward to a few days from now, when he can get back to pressing his lips to hers on her couch, until they’re plump with evidence of their kissing.

“Um.” She beholds him with an endearingly dazed look etched into her features. Dark pupils examine his hand clasped around hers and then ascend upwards again. Her face flushes with color the longer he looks.

“...Keep it?” She finally whispers, tone questioning as if she’s unsure she’s heard him correctly. Her fine pink brows have risen as high as her facial muscles seem to allow in surprise.

“Keep it,” he affirms, squeezing her fingers around the cool metal once more ahead of allowing his lone hand to fall away.

Her pupils fall to her palm again, slender fingers wrapped around the key, before traveling back up to hold his smitten stare.

Her face is as red as an heirloom tomato. He thinks she’s gorgeous like this.

“...Okay,” she finally mumbles, apparently completely flustered. “I…”

Sasuke gives her a look that he hopes conveys both his seriousness on the matter and his amusement simultaneously.

Her mouth closes once, then opens, then closes again. Her lips are gorgeous, too, endlessly distracting.

“You’re sure?” She questions softly, finally.

He nods, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards in amusement, because there have been few things in his life that he’s been more certain of than this.

“I’m sure.”

Long lashes skim her own cheekbones as she blinks before acceptance washes over her. A wide smile adorns her features as she returns the key to its place in her pocket.

Her own mouth twitches ahead of directing her focus to her tote bag again.

“Um. So…” Jade eyes flicker to him again hesitantly, blushing in a manner he finds charming. “So I was thinking. Just… if you’re feeling better. Since we’re both contagious until later today, I mean. I… Well, I talked with Ichika through the window and she set the books outside for me. So…”

She pauses, inspecting his countenance hesitantly prior to smiling again and reaching for her bag.

“If, maybe you wanted some company… If you don’t need to sleep more…”

She pulls out Hazel Wood and Isthmus, the book about the fisherman Ichika recommended to him. The spines catch the light from the window, too.

“...Book club?” She finishes in a questioning voice that’s euphonious to his ears, a suggestion of shared affinity and her smile turning sheepish.

His eyes soften.

“Yes,” he murmurs soft and sure, initiating oblivion by holding her gaze. “...Book club.”

Sakura beams, and he wonders for the upteenth occasion if she knows she’s the brightest, most felicific thing in his life, the breath in his lungs, intenerating and lambent sunlight on seafoam and all the rest.

He eats his meal while she chatters, asking questions at appropriate intervals when his mouth isn’t full. He’ll begrudgingly admit that it’s good while ill; he supposes he accepts Naruto’s apology, though he recognizes that it certainly won’t be the last time he’s teased by the idiot. He silently wonders if Sakura endures the same annoyances from their third teammate when he’s not present, the thinly-veiled raillery and endless stupidity.

That thought is somehow both comforting and amusing. He ponders it a moment further while depositing the last chunk of mushroom into his mouth, chewing methodically.

The pleasant thrumming in his chest momentarily hushes in quiescence when Sakura mentions, “I think you might have a new neighbor soon.”

Sasuke blinks, pausing his sipping of the last bit of broth. The sudden stillness reminds him of the Land of Beasts, the way the lush grasslands stop swaying just before an ugly storm rolls in.

“...What?”

Sakura tips her head to the side, the direction of the wall he shares with the woman and her child next door.

“Your neighbor. I saw her taking boxes downstairs.”

Ah.

The mysterious scrapings and clunkings suddenly achieve perfect retrospective clarity. She in all probability planned this, he realizes glumly; listening carefully to steps and visitors and doorways, searching for the opportunity to make her escape, surreptitiously moving things out and elsewhere to get away from him.

He ruminates briefly if her lease ended this month or if she broke it early, if she paid a penalty in her desperation to get her and her child as far away from him as possible.

There’s a moment in which he becomes keenly aware that he has the volition:

Let this knowledge consume him, allow the inner voice of the parts of himself he loathes to speak.

Or, to focus on the good things that are right in front of him, split evenly and clearly to his cognition as a prism divides light into its according colors, easily recognized as the rose color of Sakura’s hair, the rich berry of her scent, the pale peach of her complexion, the gold and seafoam green of her eyes, the calm azure of her gentle touch and the lilting, mesmeric lilac and honey complementaries of her voice, soft and rich with candor and compassion.

Sakura shifts slightly, surveying him with a curious expression as if she doesn’t understand his sudden disquiet - she probably doesn’t - and a sunbeam settles on the right half of her face and its corresponding shoulder. Two more freckles have inked into existence on the expanse between her trapezius and her neck, a testament to her morning spent outdoors training with Ino.

In an instant, he knows his choice.

“Hm,” he says noncommittally, rising to discard the container and place his chopsticks in the sink. “Guess so.” He takes in the newest flecks dotting her skin again as he passes behind her, allowing his gaze to linger, though he is excruciatingly aware that it will later drive him mad, this overwhelming urge to drag his lips across her skin there, up the column of her neck in a trifold of reverence and adoration and utmost, aching apology.

He’ll contact his landlord, he decides, and pay the penalty for her if there was one. He hopes that, wherever the woman and her child end up, it will bring her comfort and a sense of safety. He knows what it’s like to go without.

He also knows what it’s like to find such senses again, and maybe this is the point: to exist in the blink of an eye in divine space, to be cared for in the iterum, in the coruscating flash that they inhabit the earth. There’s augury to be found in place, surely, the compelling fibers of memory interlocking at the corners of one’s consciousness and a corollary post factum, but it principally tethers back to the person that made the event memorable in the first place, whether it’s a fisherman returning to dry land following a long journey or a girl and her mother inheriting an estate rife with mystifying writings or Sakura taking her side of his couch, closer to him than the last time; the redolence of tart berry overwhelms him, fresh and new.

He admires the way the highest points of her face look when bathed in sunshine, smooth lineaments arching and adorned aurelian, before he realizes for the thousandth time that he’s staring and settles into the mystery book instead.

They read until evenfall, content for plenary horizons to slip into violescent gradients as they discuss the more remarkable points of both books by lamplight to the scent of soup and tea. Sakura tries the decaffeinated matcha, and he watches quietly as she ladles honey into her mug, shooting him a glance that can only be described as sweet and highly appreciative, cheeks glowing deep red.

They return to the couch after dinner, antibiotic anodynes swallowed and roughly halfway through their respective texts.

He thinks he dozes around eight or nine in the evening, book at his chest as he had thought he was just resting his eyes for a minute. Sasuke blinks groggily in the direction of Sakura’s side of the couch as he awakens from the nap; at seeing it empty, his attention flits accordingly to the clock.

Eleven thirty, he notes, shifting ahead of the realization that one of his comforters has been laid carefully over him. She must have switched off the lamp they were reading by, too. He blinks, staring at the cast of moonglow atop the fabric in the desaturated night as perspicuous warmth pours into his belly. Sasuke marvels at the feeling for longer than is stringently necessary, examining the way the blanket is tucked in slightly around his feet as his vision adjusts. It was probably a challenge to situate, especially without waking him; being tall comes with some disadvantages.

Eventually he rises, turning the direction of the kitchen - it was hot today, too, he gathered, so the lily plants likely need another drink - and stops short, eyes zeroing in on that which is out of place.

There is a lone key laid purposefully on the corner of the dining table that is not his own, glinting gold in the scant sliver of moonlight cascading in from the living room window.

His chest ignites anew as it coalesces with his fingers. He turns it over in the soft glimmer of night, relishing the way it feels in his hand, every tactile cut of the metal and every small scratch from extended use. Judging by the amount of wear and the fact that she had it with her, he thinks it must be her original copy, the one she herself has carried around since first residing there instead of a spare.

It feels real in his palm, the physicality of it honey sweet and sinking into his very bone marrow.

For now, he thinks. It clinks into place purposefully next to his own on the key ring before he departs.

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sasukeandsakuralover · 3 years ago

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Sasuke Retsuden visual

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