(Ah, and before anyone mentions it; I know that the tense refuses to settle anywhere and changes around all over the place. This is mostly on purpose, and I'm honestly sorry to any grammarians who get twitches from it. It's not an oversight or a mistake, I swear.)
I don't own Naruto, which is probably a good thing, seeing as I'd never manage to produce a new chapter every week.
Warning: Mature content ahead. It isn't completely explicit, but it is powerful smutty.
Holding Patterns
Though she would never admit it aloud, Sakura found watching Sasuke and Naruto together very hot. Incredibly hot.
The way Sasuke would arch and pant near-words, the way Naruto's fingernails scored lines into Sasuke's thighs and ass the way he was always so careful not to do with her, the bitemarks both laid into each others' shoulders... It made Sakura ache just to see them.
Even better were the times when Naruto would pull away from Sasuke near the beginning to lean close to her and dig his hand into her hair. He'd kiss her, and she'd taste Sasuke in his mouth. And then he'd speak in her ear, and make her promise (Swear to me, Sakura) to watch but not to touch herself, not at all.
Those nights he would put on a show for her with Sasuke. Those nights she was usually panting nearly as much as they were by the time they finished, her thighs pressed tight together in an attempt to get some relief from the building heat within her.
Those nights Naruto would reach over to her from whatever tangle he and Sasuke had collapsed in, and tug her over to him. And then, while Sasuke made the long trip back from the far-flung place orgasm sent him, Naruto would work her with his hand or his mouth until she came.
Often, in the mindless midst of her orgasm, she would hear Sasuke chuckle softly against her shoulder, and feel a slow slide of his hand over her ribs as he told Naruto to stop getting off on being able to get both of them off.
o
Sakura has gotten very good at evading Ino's questions about what Sasuke's like in bed.
She is very careful not to tell her friend and rival that while she could write volumes or talk for hours about what Sasuke's like during sex she's never actually experienced it herself.
o
It's alright though, that she hadn't. At night, it was she, not Naruto, that he curled against. He would press himself close, as if trying to bury himself in her chest and belly, wrapping his arms around her. When he is awake his hold is tight. But when he sleeps, it loosens into a gentle embrace.
Occasionally there were the nights he would begin to whimper and shake in his sleep, and his hold would tighten on her until she could barely breathe. On those nights Sakura would gently stroke his cheek with her fingertips, and when she could get enough air she would hum softly for him until he stopped whimpering and his grip loosened.
Sasuke rarely ever wakes during these episodes, but in the mornings after she usually wakes to the sensation of him slowly and carefully stroking her skin as if he has never touched such a thing before.
o
Most of the people who knew the three of them were living in the same house together assumed that it was Sasuke and Naruto sharing Sakura, unaware that it was really closer to Sakura and Sasuke sharing Naruto.
Some times the sharing was more literal than others.
o
Sakura holds back a scream as Sasuke slides into Naruto and Naruto rocks within her. Sasuke reaches over Naruto's shoulder to press his hand against her cheek, and Naruto keens at the motion, a high needy sound that makes Sasuke almost bite through his lip. It's possible they may all lose their minds this way, but it really doesn't matter right now.
o
They held themselves together with the things that were never said.
They never, ever talked about the way that Sasuke would throw all pride away to writhe and beg wantonly beneath Naruto, or about how the filthy things Naruto growled in her ear during sex gave Sakura orgasms intense enough to roll her eyes back in her head.
o
Neither Naruto nor Sasuke ever discussed how they carefully arranged themselves to try to prevent Sakura's coming home to an empty house.
The few times they couldn't be there when she got home, it was most often Sasuke who would come to find her on their shared bed, where she would curl herself tightly around his and Naruto's pillows.
He would pull her out of her curl and into his lap, where he would pet her and murmur nothings until she could stop shaking.
Naruto would come, and spend a short time hovering ineffectually before joining them on the bed, hooking an arm around her and awkwardly stroking her hair. Sometimes he would hum in his rough voice that was never meant for music the same song that Sakura did for Sasuke's nightmares.
o
Sasuke wasn't supposed to leave Konoha, which is something they never speak of.
But Sakura has touched the porcelain curve of a mask in the back of the bottom drawer of Sasuke's dresser while she's putting away his clothes. More than once she's pressed fingertips to it, though she's never looked at it.
Naruto has touched that cool curve only once, and only barely won the internal battle against his urge to tear it out of its place and smash it against the floor.
They don't speak of the mask, the three of them, even though Sasuke knows that they know, and they know that Sasuke knows they know.
o
Sasuke doesn't say goodbye when he goes on missions. One night or one morning, he'd kiss Sakura and then kiss Naruto, the next morning or evening he'd be gone, the mask with him.
Sakura and Naruto curl close to one another while he's away, each trying to fill his empty space by themselves. They tangle around each other, Sakura silent, Naruto still.
Sometimes Sasuke was away only a day. Sometimes a few days. Sometimes a week. Sometimes two. Sometimes more.
Naruto takes to spending time on the roof when Sasuke's away, staring into the sky. When asked, he'd say he was counting stars, even when staring up into cloudless sunshine.
Sakura's ritual remains the same every day he's away. Each morning and each evening she kneels by Sasuke's dresser, opens the lowest drawer and slides a hand inside, waiting for her fingertips to meet cool porcelain.
o
When they do, she would rise and go downstairs. And he would be there.
"Okaeri, Sasuke," she'd say, and kiss him.
Sasuke never says 'tadaima' when he comes home from a mission, but he wraps his arms around her waist, and presses his face into the curve between her neck and her shoulder and simply stands there like that. Then he would let her lead him to a chair where he would sit and take off his shirt and let her heal his injuries.
Scrapes, and bruises, and cuts. Rarely, rarely ever anything more serious. Sometimes, she would find herself finishing what some other medic-nin had started.
When she finished, she would kneel by his legs and rest her cheek on his thigh. Sasuke would thread his fingers through her hair.
They would sit then, just like that, until Naruto came. And then he would tug Sasuke to his feet, and send him off in the direction of a warm shower, a soak in the bath, and clean clothes.
Then he would take Sakura back upstairs, and push her down on the bed.
"He's back," she would tell him as he pressed himself into her.
"He's back," Naruto agreed into the curve of her throat.
o
Naruto was a jounin, and he probably should have been an ANBU. But Tsunade refused, vehemently and sometimes violently, to ever give him an assassination mission.
Sasuke and Sakura exchanged glances when Naruto complained about the Hokage's continued refusal. It was his first mention of any such thing to them. Then Sakura pulled him into the common room, took off his shirt, pushed him into a seat and massaged his shoulders, laying butterfly kisses along exposed skin until Naruto groaned and turned to bury his head in her breasts, his hands already moving to pull up her skirt as she stepped between his thighs.
In the other room, Sasuke makes dinner and says nothing at all.
o
That night, Sasuke's nightmares are so bad that it takes both Sakura clutched tight to his front and Naruto pressed against his back and speaking in his ear to pull him far enough out of them to awaken.
When he does, he kisses Sakura with desperate, passionate force, then eels around with breathless speed in their arms to press his ear to Naruto's chest.
Sakura, her mouth still tingling from the force of Sasuke's kiss, watches as Naruto strokes the short, coarse hair at the back of Sasuke's neck and watches Sasuke listen to his heart beating.
Naruto never mentions taking an assassination mission within Sasuke's hearing again.
o
Most of the Konoha ninja think Naruto is still a chuunin.
Naruto takes to idly winging kunai at the bottom drawer of Sasuke's dresser. When Sasuke catches him at it, he prowls up onto the bed next to Naruto and pushes a hand down the front of his pants, pulling the kunai from a gasping Naruto's unresisting fingers before undoing his zipper and sliding down to take him in his mouth.
When Sakura catches him, she scolds him for ruining the furniture, but they both know it's nothing but words.
o
When Sakura comes home and there's no one there, she feels as if she can't breathe. The air is too thick around her, too close against her. A pressure builds in her chest, choking tight around her heart.
She flees, always, to the bedroom, to press her face against the pillows so that she can breathe again.
The faint sandalwood smell that clings to Sasuke's hair and skin. The familiar musk of Naruto. She curls tight around them, and breathes them in.
She shakes, and cannot promise herself that they'll return, because this time, this time, it might be a lie.
o
Naruto cannot sleep unless Sakura or Sasuke are there, unless he can hear them breathing, feel the heat of a living body in the bed next to him.
o
One day, Sakura goes to the training ground to tell Naruto that the mask is gone again, and interrupts him in the middle of a kata.
She presses both hands to his cheeks and stares up into his eyes, watching something ancient and full of ragemadnesshate roil somewhere behind the endless blue.
She doesn't realize she's crying until Naruto lifts a hand and wipes away the tears on her cheek with his thumb.
He assumes that she's crying because Sasuke has left again.
o
There are many, many things they don't talk about.
They don't talk about the way that Naruto's expression softens and grows wistful whenever he visits the ninja academy.
It is not the near-genin that he watches with that expression, but the littlest children, the first-year students.
o
Every year, Naruto and Sakura stand in the graveyard and watch Sasuke. He stands staring at the grave markers, his head lowered so that his bangs hide his eyes, and his fists clenched so tight at his sides that his nails draw blood from his palms.
They know that there were two promises made in front of these polished black stones.
Promises made to the dead can never be broken.
o
Sakura kneels on the floor, and slides open a kunai-scarred drawer, reaching inside.
Her fingers meet cool porcelain, and she lets out the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding as her other hand moves to touch the flat curve of her belly.
She remembers promises made to stones, and then she rises and goes downstairs.
o
"Okaeri, Sasuke."