disclaimer: do not own The Bachelor or Naruto.
dedication: to job searching. now love me. please.
A-Side Tracks: inspired by post-The Bachelor revelations. I don't watch the show, but the Wikipedia page for JP was inspirational. As of now, this will remain a oneshot. I haven't forgotten you stole my breath with their lives, I swear, I just had to write this.

Season Seven of The Bachelor finale: He chose Sakura Haruno!

(However, he does not love her.)

The crappy gossip mag crumpled between her hands.

Sakura leaned her chair back until her knees bumped against the kitchen table. She stared out the window above the kitchen sink as she curled her fingers around the cartoon bright pages. Every time she took pressure off to push her hair out of her face, it sprung back to near-flat with the subtitle taunting her.

"Fucking press," she said. "Fucking Uchiha." Her chuckle was a desperate cynical sound. "Maybe you think you can act your way out of a paper bag, but you can't act your way out of this."

She could, though – act, that is. After all, she'd charmed her way onto the show, had outdone her competition, had acted in love; all of it for a bet.

"You can't fake love, Sakura," Ino'd snorted, waving her hand. They were at a sushi bar downtown. "You are the best honest person I know and the best pretend-honest person I know, too, but love is a totally different ball game – not even Michael Jordan can switch from basketball to baseball and make it. You know what I mean?"

Sakura'd rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, Ino. Don't you think you're going to hurt your wrist if you keep flaunting your ring like that?"

Snorting, the blonde said, "It's not that big."

Sakura raised an eyebrow. "That is not what you told me last week."

Ino'd rolled her eyes. "Whatever. My point is that you can't convince someone else about love if you don't believe it yourself. It's not like facts. Love's too abstract for that. You can't fake what you can't feel."

"Whatever, Pig, whatever. You'll just have to put your money where your mouth it 'cause I'm gonna land that final carnation and you're going to have to suck on that."

Five months later, holding her arms above her head, Sakura lazily tossed the magazine at the garbage can. It unfolded slightly in the air, glossy pages like petals under a sharp breeze, but it landed unerringly in the dead center.

"Two points, Haruno," Uchiha said as he walked into the kitchen.

Sakura remained quiet, eyes fixed on where those terrible words – her very fears – had gone.

"Are you planning on spending the rest of the afternoon staring at the various appliances in our kitchen?" He walked around her, an apple in one hand, and stroked the exposed line of her shoulder.

She shuddered. 'Our kitchen'? Please. It was probably better to steer away from sharing time, she decided. They weren't in kindergarten. "Mmm. Have you been by the newspaper stand today?"

He paused. "Hm."

Looking up at him, she glared. "Do you know how embarrassing this is, Uchiha? They're saying, 'Poor foolish girl. Poor fool.' I am anything but a fool. They are fools and even they can see what is going on here."

Uchiha slipped into the seat across from her as her eyes followed him. "I find, Haruno, that it hardly matters what people say."

"Then why won't you?" she asked. "Say them, I mean, if it 'hardly matters'." She mimicked his accent accurately and she knew by the way he stilled that he knew what she meant.

"Why are their words so terrible?"

She laughed.

Neither said anything for a few minutes. Sakura picked up her cup of tea and swirled it. He bit into his apple, chewing slowly. Uchiha looked at her and she stared at the bottom of her teacup as she finished the last of it. When she stared into the clumps of green tea leaves at the bottom, she had no answer.

"Do you remember when I chose you?" He was soft-sounding, lacking the steel she was familiar with.

She stiffened instinctively, teeth set against teeth. "Yes."

"When we weren't on camera."

Easing her jaw to the side, she said, "I was surprised on camera, you know? I had no idea beforehand. You never discussed your choices outside of when asked for the camera."

He slowly licked apple juice off of his lips with the tip of his tongue and her hand flinched, darting forward the slightest bit. "Remember, though, when I told you you'd make a great actress?"

Oh. That.

"That was another embarrassing moment." She laughed shakily. "Are you sure you want to remind me of that moment?"

"I chose you," Uchiha said, "because you could play the role needed. You can fake love and you can fake happiness, but you can't fake intelligence. You'd make a great asset for my company, not as my wife but as co-CEO."

"That's a large offer."

"And sincerely made."

She slid her chair away from the table, the china teacup clasped between her palms. It was tantalizing, the offer. With access to his funds and people, she could accomplish so much. But…

"Uchiha, I'm a doctor. That's what I want to do. I'm not interested in making this… bizarre arrangement into a business deal." The words cutting their way into her speech burned in her chest, but they were relentless. "In fact, we can cut away the bizarre arrangement."

He looked at her with his eyebrows raised. "The contract says that we have to get engaged."

"You've company lawyers," she said, firing back. She rinsed the cup in the sink before carefully washing it with soap and vinegar. "Surely, there's a loophole. Like - we're already engaged. Must we get married to fulfill the contract?"

"Hm."

Sakura kept her back to him. The tears threatened her in an onslaught of feeling and she wondered when faking it had made it. She swallowed hard before saying, "I think we should at least consider the option. There's no reason we should be unfulfilled on a personal level just for the sake of our professional lives."

She set the teacup on the drying rack and hurried past him to go to their bedroom. His fingers, sticky with apple juice, lightly encircled her wrist as she breezed past him. She wanted to hear him say her name. She wanted him to say, "Sakura." She wanted him to say he loved her just like she did in front of all of those blinding cameras on a tricked-up television set last night.

But she was a great actress, she supposed. Too bad he didn't know that her best acting came from the truth when she fell for his honesty. Those words had, against all of the odds and the practical walls she'd propped up against pain, come from her heart.

And he didn't believe her.

He'd asked her why the gossip magazine's words were so terrible when what people say doesn't matter.

Sakura knew they were so terrible because she knew them to be true.

B-Side Tracks: Spit this out all in one go because the muse was with me - like the force but more useful for writers - so I apologize for any typos and stuff. I was just really excited.