Canon compliant
Genres: Humor, Romance
Ships: SasuSaku
Content Warnings: Idk; stealth mention of cunnilingus, if that bothers anyone.
When Sakura was a child she was certain that there was nothing Uchiha Sasuke couldn't do.
It was a reasonable assumption to make, as she then only knew him as a boy her age who was good at throwing shuriken and looking cute while doing so, which was all most little girls in her village needed to develop a crush.
As the years progressed and they were assigned to the same team she found out Sasuke was good at many other things: He was good at all things ninja, even teamwork when he put his mind to it; He was good at managing his time to maximize the efficiency of his training regimen; He was good at using both hands to perform any task; He was good at winding up Naruto; He was good at cooking and cleaning; He was good at protecting his teammates even when it put his life on the line; He was good at making her heart beat faster; He was good at being hard to reach; He was good at saving the world; He was good at making bad, no good, terrible, horrible choices; He was good at making her forgive him for the aforementioned horrible choices; And he was good at walking away from her, then coming back, then walking away again, in a cycle she still didn't really understand.
Sasuke could do most things well on the first try, and when he couldn't his determination would invariably lead him to work hard to master any skill he thought was worth his while.
That is, except for kissing.
Uchiha Sasuke was really bad at kissing.
Oh, god, he was so bad at kissing!
He could manage a peck or two just fine, but whenever light touches would develop into full-blown snogging, Sakura had to wonder just what the hell was wrong with him.
It wasn't as if he hadn't tried to improve: When Sakura first told him about this issue he was undisturbed, listening to her advice and taking her pointers to the best of his ability – which they soon discovered was nonexistent. They spent a good portion of the following week making out with some regularity to no effect before she got tired of having her entire face covered in saliva and decided they needed some help.
They began searching for tips in magazines, studying the technique of couples in movies (and once in real life, but that hadn't turned out well), and Sakura had even casually brought up the topic to her parents and friends. Sasuke couldn't do the same, both because his parents were dead, and because there was just no way he could talk about kissing and make it sound casual. One problem with being known as a cool, badass, silent anti-hero type is that it seriously limits the number of acceptable topics of conversation you can choose from while maintaining street cred.
Their efforts were all for naught, though, because the last Uchiha seemed unable to grasp the minutiae of the delicate art of sucking face.
Sakura didn't understand why her boyfriend couldn't learn how to kiss. It wasn't as if her was bad at other aspects of romance. When he was in a mood to woo her (which admittedly wasn't very often) he could muster surprising gestures of affection and say the sweetest things, he could cuddle like what Sakura imagined a professional cuddler would cuddle like, and he certainly knew how to use his tongue in other ways, but she just didn't want it anywhere near her mouth.
Despite the zero percent rate of success they'd had so far Sasuke still insisted on trying again and again. She wondered if he did it because he genuinely liked kissing her that much or if he was just too embarrassed to give up. Both scenarios seemed equally implausible, as did his insistence to cover her entire mouth with his (really, she'd told him multiple times that nobody liked that) whenever the opportunity presented itself, and yet there they were.
Of course, Sakura loved him and would kiss him all day long if he really wanted it, but she couldn't help wondering if that was really the case. He was notoriously undemonstrative, and she suspected she was the only living person who could hug him out of the blue without getting socked in the face. Sasuke was doing this just because he wanted to please her she had to tell him he didn't have to go through such lengths, because she was satisfied with the physical intimacy they already shared. She didn't want him to feel inadequate because he was bad at something as inconsequential as frenching. She also didn't want to endure Sasuke's mutant tongue needlessly, but that was of secondary importance.
"Sasuke-kun," she began one night, after she'd wiped the evidence of their last practice session from her cheeks "I need to ask you something."
He hesitated, then nodded. Even if Sakura didn't know him well enough to notice that there was something wrong, his blushing cheeks were a dead giveaway.
"So, um… you know we don't have to do this if you don't want to, right?"
That seemed to startle him.
"Do you want to stop?"
"No, that's not-" she paused, unsure of how to proceed "It's just… If you don't want to make out as often it's fine by me, because I'm happy with the other things we do. So, if you want to stop, then..."
Sakura was starting to regret speaking about it. She hadn't seen Sasuke look this nervous in years, clenching his fists and looking away, so she knew whatever it was he was thinking about brought him no small amount of embarrassment.
"Only if you want to, of course!" she amended quickly.
Sasuke opened his mouth, then closed it, then repeated the same movement a few more times, still avoiding her eyes.
"I- I do like it," he spoke at last, and Sakura was momentarily floored by the effort he had to make to say those four words, until she remembered he still had difficulty opening up, to her or anybody else. He seemed to consider an admittance of enjoyment to be the same as an admittance of weakness.
Fine, so there were two things her boyfriend was bad at.
"But," he continued "I know I'm not any good at it, and I understand if you want to keep kissing to a minimum."
"No, Sasuke-kun!" she protested – more energetically than she would've expected under the circumstances – and touched his cheek to make sure he'd look her in the eyes and see what she felt "I'm happy. At first neither of us had any idea what we were doing, remember? I was just happy to be together, and I still am. I like kissing you, alright? I really do." And she was being honest, if only because she liked him.
There was only the tiniest change to his expression – a softening of the eyes, a relaxation of the jaw – but Sakura had grown familiar enough to interpret those signs and know she had placated his doubts.
"Besides, if we keep practicing you're bound to get better sooner or later!"
Sasuke never got any better at kissing. Neither the time they spent traveling the shinobi world, nor having a daughter together, nor years of marriage improved his technique, but Sakura didn't mind.
Back when she was a girl and thought he was perfect, when she used to fantasize about marrying him, she pictured a relationship of passion, of flowers and chocolate, or compliments that would make her blush, and kisses that would certainly be good and make everyone else impressed and jealous of their love. She couldn't have fathomed how different things would be, much less how her adult-self would be happier like this.
Her husband's spontaneous demonstrations of affection were discreet, gentle, tentative, as if she'd evaporate from his touch otherwise. He rarely bought her presents, but she couldn't imagine a greater gift than the blind trust he placed on her as a kunoichi, a medic, the mother of his child. He didn't write her poetry, but he listened to and considered everything she said, no topic of conversation being judged as unimportant, even if he didn't really care about redecorating the living room or the birthday party Ino threw for her son. His kisses didn't make anyone envious, but Sakura was always glad to receive them, because they were his.
Sasuke was utterly hopeless when it came to kissing, but Sakura wasn't going to complain. She loved that man, shoddy osculation skills and all.
Getting back on writing after a while of being unproductive. The ending turned out sappier than I'd planned, but I guess this is fine.