“earth to sasuke!” sakura waves her chopsticks in his face. “are you listening to me?”
sasuke breaks his stare, pulling his eyes back down to the food between them. sakura looks over her shoulder.
across the street from the small storefront where they share breakfast, a market vendor is selling fruit. a woman, tall and shapely, bends over a crate of apples, her dress clinging to her backside. sakura can see without looking at the woman’s face that she is beautiful. the type with long and glossy combed hair, proper posture, an air of elegance. and a large ass.
“wow, really?” sakura frowns.
“what? no!” why did he feel so defensive? sasuke clears his throat. “don’t get the wrong idea. i just spaced out.”
“sure,” sakura is scowling now. “all you men are pigs.”
-
needless to say, sakura does not join him at the construction site that morning. or afternoon. sasuke has the decency to be a little embarrassed about breakfast, but feels irrationally irritated by her cold shoulder today. he assumes she is off moping somewhere.
after work, he sets out to find her. they are staying in a small village, somewhere in the north where it is already approaching the break of summer. he wants to find her before dark, but she isn’t at the local clinic or the children’s center where she sometimes volunteers. he starts to worry, but mostly feels annoyed.
it’s not until he passes a particularly loud pub that he hears her laugh. he sighs. of fucking course.
he doesn’t very much like the view he finds when he steps inside. he approaches sakura, who is sitting at the bar surrounded by many empty glasses and a bevy of burly country men. sakura has never had any trouble keeping up with big drinkers, courtesy of tsunade, and the men seem impressed and a little smitten.
“sakura.”
she ignores him. “sakura.”
one of the men notices him. “hey, princess. you know this kid? want us to take care of him?”
sakura finally looks at him and narrows her eyes. sasuke’s face is impassive. he can see her calculating a punishment for him, a lowly criminal awaiting judgement by his queen. finally, very dignified, she murmurs into her glass, “no. don’t know him. take him away.”
the way she is pouting nearly makes sasuke laugh out loud, but instead he lets her burly knights usher him outside. sasuke heads home alone, smiling because those men are right to call her princess. he thinks of all the people in the world, there is possibly no one quite like her.
-
sasuke, light sleeper as he is, wakes to the sound of retching. he fights the urge to laugh again, and gets out of bed to help her.
sakura is a mess. she is on the floor, clutching the toilet bowl with both hands as she vomits again and again. the light is too flourescent, so her eyes are squeezed tight. she is miserable and crying a little bit.
suddenly she feels sasuke’s large hands in her hair, gathering it all to pull out of her face. sakura whines when he tugs too hard. “sasuke-kun. i don’t feel good.”
“shh. i know.” he rubs her back. “you drank too much.”
“no! please stay.” still on the floor, sakura throws herself around his legs, burrowing her head between his knees. the humor of her words are not lost on him. her crying picks up speed, and sasuke suspects he’ll soon hear the heart of things.
“sasuke-kun, you know, i’m not- ” she chokes on her tears and his knees are getting wet, “i’m not... pretty.”
he scoffs. “clearly.”
this stuns sakura a bit, and she recoils to look at him in horror. she obviously didn’t mean right now, she meant in general, like at her baseline, compared to other women at their baseline, for example the woman at the market. she tries to give him a nasty look but knows her face is a wet mess with hair, snot, and probably vomit. giving in, she looks at him thickly and deflates with a sigh, presses her sticky face against his leg.
at this, sasuke finally breaks. he is laughing from his shoulders, his chest, his belly, and sakura wilts. the sound reminds her of when they were very young. his laugh is breathy, choppy, and impossibly dear to her. she falls in love a little more.
“no, you’re....” he’s looking at her strangely. “you’re....”
sakura holds her breath.
“nevermind. just come to bed.”
-
its a soft, tiny thing that unfurls between them. slow and waywardly, the way autumn leaves drift to the ground with the sway of the wind. it’s nothing they acknowledge, and nothing that sasuke can even name.
