note: because i'm enamoured with the idea of sakura being smarter than sasuke.

(and the idea of surly!sasuke turning into immature!sasuke when he doesn't get his way)

soundtrack: islands - the xx

darling, i'd go blind for you, if you let it go sometimes, let it go sometimes, let it go.

Tsunade is jolted awake as the door to her office slams open against the wall. Wiping at the drool at the corner of her mouth, she glares at the dark-haired teenager standing in front of her document-cluttered desk. "Didn't anyone teach you to knock before entering, kid?"

"I registered for pre-law courses." He shoves a stack of papers - his class schedule - at her. "Why does my schedule have a pre-med chemistry course on it."

Tsunade narrows her eyes at him, unimpressed by his apparent inability to ask questions that didn't sound like statements. "What's your name?"

"Sasuke Uchiha. Freshman."

She grunts and takes the papers from him, peering down at them before she sighs and rubs her temples. "Look, kid. I'm the President of Konoha University. I've got other things to do besides fix your schedule; that's the Dean's job."

Sasuke's jaw clenches. "I've already talked to the Dean. He said these kinds of mix-ups happen often, and that course selection processing time can vary. It could be a week before I'm allowed to switch out of a course."

Tsunade gives him a flat stare. "Well, that's it then. It sucks, but you have to deal with it. Now why are you still in my office?"

"You're the President. You're supposed to fix mistakes that your institution makes. I didn't take a single chemistry class in High School. I am not taking a pre-med course."

"Well, Sasuke, I've got a shocker for you: you are taking a pre-med course, at least for the next few days until I get around to fixing this grievous mistake that my institution seems to have made." Tsunade leans back in her chair, smirking ever-so-slightly. "Better get to work memorising those polyatomic ions."

Naruto leans over to whisper in Sasuke's ear with a shit-eating grin on his face. "Those lab goggles look great on you, teme."

Sasuke stares straight ahead, eyes focused on the whiteboard at the front of the class.

He leans in again. "Damn, that lab coat looks good, too. Maybe you oughta consider a career in pharmaceuticals- OW."

Sasuke is tired of Naruto's stupid comments. Sasuke is not ashamed to admit that he enjoys Naruto's squeak of pain as he smacks him upside the head.

The professor takes her place at the front of the classroom. In the next few minutes, she introduces herself as Shizune-sensei, assigns the class a lab report on titration due next class, and tells them all to 'get to work if they want a passing grade.

Sasuke wishes he knew what titration was.

It isn't until an hour later, when Shizune-sensei gasps loud enough to turn every head in the room, that Sasuke is tempted to throw his oh-so-precious lab equipment out the window. "You... you're done already? It looks like you've performed this lab perfectly. It's been nearly five years since anyone's got it right on their first set of trials!" Shizune-sensei marvels somewhere to Sasuke's left. "What's your name?"

"Sakura Haruno."

Sasuke whips his head up. He'd been expecting some nerdy, overly zealous little punk, but... a girl?

With pink hair?

The girl Shizune-sensei's cooing over - Sakura, she said her name was - can't be much more than five feet tall. As Shizune-sensei raves on, Sakura tucks a strand of bubblegum hair behind her ear and Sasuke watches her cheeks take on a slight pink tinge.

He fumes.

Shizune-sensei leads Sakura to the front of the room now and clears her throat. "Everyone, this is Sakura Haruno. I'm sure you all just heard what I said about her completion of this lab."

Naruto nudges Sasuke in the side. "Heh, she's pretty cute."

Sasuke wants to throttle him. He drops his narrowed gaze to the equipment sitting on his dumb little lab table - what was that cylindrical thing called again? A pipette? Burette? All this foreign terminology was going to drive him crazy - and refuses to acknowledge Naruto.

"I realise this is turning out to be a challenging lab for some of you." Shizune-sensei's gaze wanders not-so-subtly over to the back of the room where Naruto and Sasuke are still struggling to get their experiment started. "Frustrated as you might be, I hope you take this opportunity to ask Sakura any questions you might have regarding the lab. I'm sure she'll be more than happy to issue some pointers." She turns to Sakura with a smile. "Thank you, Sakura. You can return to your seat now."

As Sakura walks past Sasuke on her way back to her table, her eyes dart over to his admittedly pitiful lab set-up before she meets his stare. She gives Sasuke the tiniest of grins and floats past him, taking her seat and folding her hands in her lap.

In that moment, Sasuke knows that he hates her. He hates her obnoxious, mocking little smirk. He hates that goody-two-shoes pencil skirt, that featherlight voice, those mint-green eyes.

Sakura Haruno is officially the most annoying girl Sasuke's ever met.

After the Chem Class from the Pits of Hell is officially over for the day, Sasuke snatches up his textbook and stalks over to the campus café, intent on downing an espresso or three and figuring out this scientific bullshit. The Uchiha don't fail anything, so Sasuke is absolutely not going to fail this lab report. After standing in line for a full five minutes, he opens his mouth to tell the barista his order, and-

Sakura. The pink-haired demon is standing behind the cash register.

"Oh, it's nice to see you again!" She laughs, and her eyes twinkle.

Sasuke responds with an intelligent, "hn?"

Her laugh fades into a smile. "Yeah, going from pre-med labs to working shifts at a café - I'm a woman of many talents, I know," she says, and winks to let him know she's just teasing.

Sasuke gapes at her.

She clears her throat. "So what can I get you, mister...?"

He realises she's asking him two things at once and he snaps at himself for standing there like an idiot. "It's Sasuke. And I'll have an espresso."

It's as she's punching in numbers into the cash register that Sakura's gaze flashes to the pre-med textbook in Sasuke's arms and she gives an audible sigh.

Sasuke scowls. "What?"

Sakura rests a fist on her hip and turns sharp green eyes on him. "You've never taken a science class in your life, have you?"

Sasuke's glower deepens tenfold. "I don't need your attitude. I don't even know you, so I would appreciate it if you minded your own business and served me my espresso."

She shrugs off his words and he almost wonders if she'd even heard him. "Why are you taking a pre-med course?"

So she has guts, it seems. "My schedule's fucked up. I'm stuck in that class until the school gets its shit together and puts me back in the pre-law course I registered for."

Sakura blinks, and suddenly there's that tinkling laugh again, the one grates on his nerves. To Sasuke's horror, Sakura unties her employee apron, folds it neatly onto the marble countertop, and steps out from behind the counter.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm going to help you," she says. His facial expression must have alarmed her, because she explains, "oh, don't worry. Ino will cover for me."

"I wasn't worrying."

"Anyway," she goes on, leading him to a table in the corner and plopping down onto one of the stools, "the lab report's due next class. No offence or anything, but you and your blond friend looked like you could use a little help." She plucks the textbook straight from Sasuke's hands and begins flipping through it, seemingly indifferent to the fact that Sasuke remains standing, stiff-shouldered and silent. "So I think we should start with-"

"Why are you helping me?"

She looks up at him, wide-eyed. "Don't you want to get a good grade on this?"

"I'm only going to be in that class for a few more days. And I can get good grades," he grinds out, "by myself."

Sakura leans back and studies him. After a minute, her eyes narrow into a look that's eerily similar to the one Tsunade had given him earlier. "I was under the impression that you wanted to keep your ego intact, but fine." Her nostrils flare. "Your set-up was all wrong. Your measurements weren't accurate, and you used the wrong ratios of chemicals. If we compare our recorded values, I think we'll find quite a significant difference." She pauses, and her lips twitch. "You're going to fail the lab, Sasuke. Even if you're planning on switching out of the class, do you really want your GPA to plummet so early in the semester?"

She's right. God fucking damn it.

Sasuke averts his gaze and slides onto the stool opposite her. "...Annoying."

Studying at the café is part of his routine, Sasuke reminds himself. He never meant to end up being coerced into accepting Sakura's help.

Nonetheless, Sasuke makes his way to the café at four o' clock on the dot everyday as per his routine. He sits himself at a table and pulls out his laptop, and when Sakura's shift ends at four-thirty, she slides into a chair across from him with a smile and a cup of his favourite espresso. To others, it probably looks like they're good friends, or maybe even boyfriend and girlfriend. He grimaces at the thought.

However, what Sasuke can't deny is that Sakura is a good teacher. She's thorough, meticulously explaining complex concepts that Sasuke's never even heard of (although it helps that he's a quick learner), and shows no hint of the arrogance Sasuke had assumed of her. In fact, what she's doing for him is quite... nice of her.

"Once you have your set of hypotheses, the conclusion is the hardest part of the lab report," she tells him one day, "it's easy to process data and write up results. That's all mechanical stuff. For the conclusion, you have to be able to analyse the information you have. Don't just accept whatever's in front of you - look underneath the underneath." She cuts herself off with a laugh that peals like a bell. "That sounds cheesy, but it's true."

Sasuke nods. "Look underneath the underneath."

It's when Sasuke is packing up to return to his dorm, the first draft of his lab report finished thanks to Sakura's help, that she says, "I want to be a doctor."

He stops what he's doing and gives her a flat look. "You're taking pre-med courses, so I'm not exactly surprised."

"I don't have much money," she goes on. "It's not like I want to have two part-time jobs on top of my coursework. That's a lot of extra work to juggle, you know? And if I don't finish in the top five percent of the class, I risk losing my scholarship." Her brow furrows. "I never wanted to be the type of person to obsess about grades to the point of sacrificing my happiness for a perfect GPA, but I guess I don't have much choice." She laughs again, but to Sasuke, the sound comes out bitter, distorted. "I used to love dancing, too. I took ballet for ten years. When I was making my university schedule, I couldn't find time for it, so I gave it up." Her frown deepens and she dips her head. She's quiet for a solid minute.

Sasuke doesn't say anything.

She clears her throat. "So that's my spontaneous diatribe of the day." She chuckles. "Anyway, I think we've got a good first draft of that report done, so feel free to head off-"

"I never wanted to be a lawyer."

Sakura blinks. "What?"

He speaks low and soft. "Most of my family members are successful lawyers. I... I used to want to study psychology, but my father told me that would be useless." He's quiet now, uncomfortable with sharing with sharing these snippets of information, at the same time hoping she'll read between the lines of what he's trying to say: I understand. He looks up to meet Sakura's scrutinising stare and shifts in his seat, scowling slightly. "What?"

"I know there's pressure on you and you want to make your family happy, but you should take some time and think it out for yourself. You're in college, don't box yourself in just yet! At the very least, give yourself a little room for experimentation." She leans forward, a glint in her eye, and with a fierceness that leaves Sasuke speechless, she whispers, "don't let yourself become blinded by a path you think you can't change, Sasuke-kun."

He tells himself it's the honorific she attaches to his name that stuns him the most, but it's not. His mouth opens but his tongue sits far too heavily to move, so he settles for a blank stare. She stares right back at him, eyes wide but mouth set in a resolute line. Brave.

Sasuke shoves his books into his messenger bag, slings it over his shoulder, and walks away without a word.

He isn't at the café the next day. Sakura tells herself that he must be too busy working on his lab report.

The day Shizune-sensei hands back the graded lab reports, Sasuke goes straight to the café.

He walks straight past the customers waiting in line, shoots a death glare at the one customer brave enough to give him a dirty look, and hands his lab report to a wide-eyed Sakura. She looks down at it, a dazed smile growing on her face, and says, "you got an A, Sasuke-kun."

"Aa."

She's still gripping the lab report in her hands as if she can't believe it's real. "You... you got an A! You aced it!"

Sasuke wants to roll his eyes. "I'm not dumb. You're acting like I'm Naruto."

She laughs again, and Sasuke finds that he wants to laugh with her. "I know you're not dumb. I'm just happy, that's all." Her eyes shine and under the warm café lighting they flicker silver. "Congratulations, Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke can only grunt in response. He shoves his hands in his pocket and mumbles, "this doesn't mean I'm staying in that Chem class." He registers a vague look of disappointment flitter across her face - she's so expressive, always so easy to read - before he adds, "I'm switching to a different course. One that I like."

Sakura beams at him.

On Monday morning, Sasuke walks into Psych 101 with a new course schedule in his hand. He's the first one to arrive, it seems, so he glances around the lecture hall and picks a seat near the front. Reaching into his messenger bag, he fishes out his phone and types out a quick text.

Right across the hall, Sakura's stepping into her Biochemistry class when her phone buzzes.

To: Sakura

From: Sasuke

Message sent: 8:56 AM

You taught me that a little experimentation couldn't hurt.

I'm about to start my new psychology course.

Thank you.

Sakura smiles. You're welcome, Sasuke-kun.

note: haha. i tried to throw in a few parallels between this and canon. got a little fluffy towards the end, whoops.

have a great weekend, little darlings! xx