If Winter
Naruto would always remember what she had looked like that day with her snow flecked hair glinting under the streetlight. As if her pink tresses were haphazardly dotted with stars.
The ease with which they had flitted from one random topic to another barely masked their fear of lapsing into silence. Silence meant ghosts. Empty spaces and too many names in stone. With the war still lingering in their bones, silence brought with it an unreasoning reproach.
(Silence wasn't remembrance, only regrets.)
Implacable life was their only defense against pain.
Yet living had become precarious between the two of them.
For silence also brought to surface barely articulated desires, promises spoken and unspoken. The weight of shared history threatened their tentative peace unless diligently countered with white noise.
Sakura's eyes had been unnaturally bright when she enquired about Hinata. They couldn't afford to wait, she had insisted, after everything they had been through.
He couldn't help but ruefully reply that she didn't mind it herself anyway.
Sakura's unflinching stare burned his irises.
"I'm not waiting. I stopped waiting a long time ago. I want him home Naruto, but I'm not his home."
He sighed.
"Sakura-chan... it's fine. You don't have to pretend with me. I--we...things just got blurry for a while. But it's alright now. Things are how they're supposed to be. We both know he's always been the one."
"Don't worry you idiot," Sakura archly smiled, "I'm not going to say that I love you."
For the first time he found himself hoping as he had scarcely hoped before.
Sakura-chan had always been a terrible liar.
"All I'm saying is someone does, which is a surprise seeing the idiot that you are, but you shouldn't let this chance sli--ooomph!"
His kiss was clumsy and desperate and feverish with ancient longing and unspeakable love. It was dreams and desires of a lifetime condensed into a communion of chapped lips. Hopeful. Joyful. Uncontrollable. It was all him.
And that was assurance enough for Sakura.
*
Naruto would always remember how she had looked that night, her sea-foam eyes glittering with love and lust and trust and a thousand other things he had no words for.
Touching her for the first time was like wandering into a home he'd never been but one so heartbreakingly familiar.
It was both a promise and a consummation.
(He would safely tuck away the bloodstained sheets later; roses spilled on the white of snow, a midnight covenant.)
*
Once upon a time, snow had smelled of melancholy. Of love and not-love.
Now he sees flowers sprouting out of earth in its winter sleep.
Sometimes, lies bloom into truth.