a/n: sasusaku pregnant headcanons are just yes? for shannon, my sun. you are the light that i will always follow, mwah.
And, honestly, the day couldn't have been any fucking worse.
By the time he arrives to the Uchiha compound, Sasuke is soaked with rain, a thick cough in his chest, thicker mud on his clothes and scratches on the side of his face from where sharp branches that flew in the blustering winds caught his skin. His head hurts and his body hurts even more, practically every breath he makes is a sigh, and that tiny, pitch black part of him was taunting him all over again, but then he sees her. He sees light.
Sakura stands outside the door with a disgustingly bright green umbrella, a beautifully serene smile stretched across her face. Her eyes are practically twinkling with happiness as she watches him walk to her, and Sasuke's shoulders relax at the look on her face, at the sight of her belly that is swollen with their child. He can't even make it all the way to her - he has to stand there in the rain and stare at the ray of light that was Uchiha Sakura, and even in the deafening rain, he can hear the words that ground him to this earth, that give him reason to carry on with each sunrise.
"Welcome home, Sasuke-kun!" she waddles over to him, still not used to having such weight centered in her stomach, and he doesn't know why, but he wants to cry at her feet and hold her whilst he sleeps and kiss her mouth and her tummy all at once - but he saves that for another time. She raises her arm so that the umbrella just about covers his head, since she's a whole head shorter than him, after all. "Jeez, you're gonna catch a cold, standing out here!"
"Ah," is his reply. He takes the umbrella from her with one hand and puts the other on the small of her back, and they go inside.
They go home.
That evening, he listens to their baby's kicks and wriggles whilst Sakura hums tunelessly as she works through medical records and paperwork. He can see her tummy twinge slightly where their baby moves, and he traces the stretch marks on her pale skin and then around her out-popped bellybutton, and he feels the baby kick back at him, alive and fierce and bright - like it's mother. Sasuke is silent as fat tears, only three or four, slide out of his eyes and over the bridge of his nose.
Sakura knows. She wordlessly takes her free hand and runs it through his hair, drags her nails lightly in his scalp, and her offbeat humming morphs into a tranquil lullaby. He almost falls asleep with his forehead against her pregnant belly, but before he does, Sasuke looks up at her. She's still humming for him and their child, a pen in one hand that ticks and crosses and signs and comments, and he doesn't know how he could possibly put into words what he feels for her, but he tries.
"Sakura," his voice is less than a whisper, like it's a secret. "...th-"
"You're welcome," her gaze is heavy with sincerity, and something else. "You're always very, very welcome."