Conviction: Chapter 9

by Rachel Poulson

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It was a strange thing to know, that she was kissing Sasuke. After all these years, Sakura's cup of good karma had obviously runneth over.

It was also different than she'd imagined. She could never have imagined the way her skin lit up at his touch, or the taste of his mouth, like smooth peppermint. She wanted to memorize this all, to save it for a time when he was out of reach.

Her back bumped against the cork board covering one wall of her office as she gasped for breath. She was aware of the sounds they were making, the groans each was struggling to suppress, as they familiarized themselves with each others' bodies. She knew just how dead she would be if the Hokage could see her now, and took some satisfaction in this stolen moment of intimacy.

She fumbled with the pin in her hair when Sasuke made it clear it was annoying him. His kisses lingered over her cheeks, neck, collarbone... She sighed and felt her fingertips curl in the wake of his attentions.

Sasuke himself was facing a dilemma: he loved kissing her on the lips, but the smell of her hair and her skin and her... well... everything, was just as tempting. He settled for getting as much in as he could on both fronts and appreciating the way her body was wrapping around his.

All he could think about was Sakura, and the things she did unknowingly that made him want to smirk. Buying tomatoes for her apartment because she knew he'd eat them if he came over; weeping whenever a single patient died, whether or not she'd been their doctor; healing the members of Team 7 after every brutal four–way sparring match, determined to let no bruise go unnoticed even while falling over from exhaustion.

His eyes were darker than usual as they trained on her face. "Sakura..." His breath tickled her ear. A gasp escaped her lips as he bit her lightly. "Sasuke!" she hissed. "We're in my office."

"Hn." He paused in his conquest and glanced upwards. "Maybe we should lock the door."

She dissolved into a fit of giggles, leaving herself wide open for the next kiss. She opened her mouth to tell him off, but there was a slight click and a heavy thud as the door flew open.

"SAKURA! Great news! Hinata and I are–" Naruto stopped, the grin slowly sliding off his face. "Um. Sorry. Am I interrupting?"

In response Sasuke swore under his breath and turned away from the furiously blushing Sakura. "What is it, dobe?"

But Naruto was still staring at their disheveled appearances, all other distractions nonexistent. His forehead scrunched in shock. "Teme, you're gonna have to explain this."

...

He was blushing. Not a lot, but Uchiha Sasuke was blushing as he looked away.

Sakura nudged him lightly in the ribs. "You could at least look happy for him," she whispered.

He scowled, but there was no heart in it as his eyes roved Ichiraku's bar.

Naruto was engaged.

The first thing the jinchuuriki did when Sasuke had muttered an explanation was laugh at both of them until they were sure he'd die of apoplexy. Then he'd held out a pale envelope to Sakura and invited her to his wedding.

Because Sasuke's expression, thunderous since their interruption earlier, wasn't shaken by her pleading, Sakura decided to change tactics. "You're just mad because he got engaged before you," she teased. "If you're going to get all mopey and emo because your best friend is getting married, then I should go and find Kiba."

He turned dark eyes on her in a glare and reached into his pocket. "No," he said darkly. His questing hand withdrew a blue ballpoint pen, and he began to draw on her wrist, completely focused and most uncharacteristic of Sasuke. She giggled as the nub passed over veins and a slight scar. "I didn't know you aspired to be a tattoo artist, Sasuke."

He just shot a glare at her and finished. When he released her hand, she squinted to examine the tiny drawings.

Another daisy chain.

She smiled in response to his embarrassed expression and kissed him lightly on the lips. "Thank you, Sasuke."

When she turned back to the party, she couldn't help but feel that Sasuke looked smug. But it was okay. She liked smug better than sulky.

...

Now it was her cheeks' turn to burn.

She couldn't believe she'd been roped into shopping with Hinata. It had been all right for the first few hours, finding a dress for the engagement party and some kimono selections for the clan ceremonies, but now Sakura was faced with a task both foreign and frightening.

She had to introduce Hinata to the world of lingerie.

Up until now, the Hyuuga heiress had survived on what the matrons of her clan had chosen for her, and what she bought in regular clothing shops. But, she confessed to Sakura, she didn't know what to wear for her wedding night.

So Sakura was forced to take her deep into Konoha's red light district, where Hinata spent an hour and a half just trying on bras.

Then came Sakura's turn. She was shocked that Hinata was buying her clothes, but apparently it was tradition. The bride's clan paid for everything in the wedding, including what was worn by the groom's immediate family. Hinata assured her that both she and Sasuke counted as siblings.

And the fittings began again.

After six hours of shopping and what seemed like an eternity of changing clothes, Hinata dropped her at home and went to visit Naruto.

Sakura trudged inside lugging three huge bags of lingerie. Apparently the other dresses and clothing needed to be pressed and packed for the wedding, but this stuff could survive. She flipped on her living room light and pulled the bags inside, locking the door behind her.

"Shopping," came a flat voice.

Sasuke was sitting on her couch, halfway through one of her medical textbooks. "You were out shopping." He narrowed his eyes at the bags, which she hastily tried to hide from view. "What did you buy?"

"Oh, um, just some stuff for Naruto's wedding. Hinata took me and made me buy everything that fit."

He raised an eyebrow. "Will I get to see any of it?"

She shrugged as though unconcerned. "It depends."

"On?"

"If you really want to wait for me to change into them."

He smirked and crossed the room to reach her. By way of answer he tugged the bags out of her grip and tossed them on the floor.

She smiled into his kiss. "Impatient, are we?"

He breathed in her heady scent and groaned. Knowing that she needed this as desperately as he did, she decided to stop antagonizing him and get his shirt off.

...

If she thought kissing him was strange, that was nothing compared to living with him. They never actively moved in together, it just sort of happened. If Sasuke wanted to return to the Uchiha Compound, they ate dinner and slept in his house. If Sakura felt homesick and needed to water her plants, she dragged him back to her apartment.

The arrangement went unnoticed for nearly a week before Naruto caught on. Then he decided to sit down and have a serious talk with Sasuke, man to man.

He took the opportunity to corner him after an early morning sparring match in one of the Konoha training fields. Sasuke, recognizing the look in his friend's eyes, leaned against a tree as Naruto paced before him.

"If you ever hurt her," the jinchuuriki said in a low voice, "I will kill you. If you ever leave her, I will kill you. If you ever make her cry, I will kill you."

Sasuke bore this lecture mutely until Naruto had to pause and regain his breath. "Dobe, I don't think your possessiveness of her will be a factor in our relationship."

Naruto looked indignant. "Why the hell not?"

"Three reasons. One, I love her. Two, if I ever hurt her she will murder me and resurrect me for the pleasure of killing me a second time. Three, she is not yours."

There was a tense moment between the two men before Naruto relaxed. "Good answers, teme. I won't interfere. But she is my teammate too, and I will raise hell if she sheds a single tear over you."

Sasuke smirked. "What, like you did?"

A blush enveloped Naruto's face. "I didn't cry over you!"

"I seem to remember some stories from Sakura and Ino about you crying and sobbing because I left–"

"Teme, I swear to kami I'll castrate you–"

"–just don't let your crush on me get in the way of our missions, okay dobe?"

Naruto tackled his best friend in the middle of the clearing, and their scuffle was only broken when Sakura punched Sai through a tree a few hundred meters away.

They helped one another up in silence and watched Sakura spar with Sai. Some of the Konoha nin called her the Angel of Death, pink hair floating around her face in battle, eyes and skin glowing with the force of her chakra.

Naruto put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Let's go grab some ramen."

And after all this time, eating ramen almost daily for a year and a half, Sasuke found to his surprise that he didn't hate the greasy food.