Disclaimer: Not mine.
"Gah!" Sakura scowled and poked at the ruined dessert with a lone pinky finger as though she was handling radioactive waste.
Then again, it was hard to begrudge her this reaction, not when Naruto's attempt at a slab of White Day chocolate had melted into a silvery, metallic-looking blob, despite her best efforts at supervising him. These efforts included shoving a cookbook under his face while brandishing a rolling pin in her hand. Throughout the ordeal, Naruto had busily stirred the butter, icing sugar, and vanilla extract together, one eye fixed on the cookbook in great terror, and the other eye fixed on the rolling pin in even greater terror.
And yet...
She was at a loss as to how he managed to screw up one simple recipe so badly, even with all the ingredients and cooking instructions conveniently laid out right in front of him.
Beside her, Iruka-sensei frowned as he inspected the toxic compound, Sakura's partner in bafflement. She was truly grateful to her old teacher from the bottom of her heart for his assistance. When she found out that despite getting married in only a few weeks, Naruto's cooking expertise extended only to making miso ramen, shio ramen, tonkotsu ramen...
Basically nothing except ramen...she may have snapped. A little. Okay, maybe a lot. But seriously, what was the fool thinking, that he would feed Hinata noodles 365 days a year? Someone in the back of her mind, someone who sounded suspiciously like the long-dormant Inner Sakura, said yes. And that was enough to make her...snap.
A vision of the coming days flashed in Sakura's mind, one of a poor pregnant Hinata waking up to her future husband subjecting her to meal after meal of ramen, because he thought it was "nutritious" and "healthy" for growing babies.
Another vision of Naruto torturing his future wife and children by taking them out to Ichiraku for every meal, even at three in the morning.
The newly-awoken Inner Sakura viciously supplied her with a third image of Naruto's future kids, tearfully accusing him of loving ramen more than his own family.
The frightening thing was, Sakura knew that these visions of the future were all within the realms of possibility. After all, how often had she, Sasuke, and Kakashi-sensei gone through such situations? How many times did her old team return from missions, exhausted, bone-soaked, and ravenous, Sakura craving nothing more than some anmitsu and hot tea, only for Naruto to drag them all off to eat ramen? How many times?
Even Sai and Captain Yamato had suffered along with her, despite being late additions to their team.
A ninja was one who endured. But too much was too much.
It was unacceptable.
Hinata didn't deserve a married life of eternal torment, so Sakura had decided to take matters into her own hands. Naruto would learn how to cook a non-ramen dish before the end of the month, even if it killed her. Iruka-sensei was more than happy to help, when she informed him of the dire situation at hand.
And what better time to surprise Hinata than on White Day?
Which brought her back to the problem.
"It tastes fine," Iruka said, breaking a small bit off the blob and taking a bite, his eyes widening incredulously. "But I don't understand how."
"It doesn't matter if it tastes fine, not when it looks like cat puke!" Sakura snapped, also taking a bite and chewing slowly.
"Cat puke?" Naruto snapped back.
Her lips puckered as she let the delicious taste of vanilla soak into her tastebuds and radiate across her tongue. Mmmm, not bad, not bad at all. If Sasuke were to ever give her chocolate like this, she certainly wouldn't have minded. To be honest, Naruto wasn't actually bad at cooking, despite his lack of experience with anything other than ramen. She glanced around the kitchen, taking in the horrific-looking remains of his attempts at fried rice and other concoctions. Not that those dishes tasted bad, either...
But food presentation was important. And Hinata deserved the best. She needed chocolate that looked good and tasted good, not this roadkill-looking stuff.
"Yes, cat puke, Naruto. Please, we've been over this so many times. You need to make food that actually looks appetizing. So that people want to eat it." Sakura groaned and put her head on the table. It had been hours. Hours and hours.
Teaching Naruto was tough. Her patience was fraying like old cloth, and the only reason she was still keeping her sanity intact was the thought of Hinata's radiant smile at getting homemade White Day chocolate, just for her.
"Iruka-sensei..." She lifted her head wearily. "How did you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Teach us all for so many years," Sakura muttered. "Teach Naruto for so many years. It's killing me. I don't get how you're so patient."
Their old teacher chuckled. "Well, compared to painting the Hokage Monument, this is small stuff. And I've had years of practice reading Naruto's gibberish handwriting, so the mess he's making now is nothing."
"His handwriting still looks like gibberish," said Sakura. "When he writes mission reports, Tsunade-shishou always has a stroke trying to read it."
Both sensei and student laughed.
"I'm still here, ya know," Naruto said grouchily.
"Sakura, watch and learn from the master," Iruka-sensei said, rolling up his sleeves. It was usually something that inspired terror in his Academy students, but today the effect was significantly diluted by the fact that he was wearing a cute ramen-themed apron over his clothes. "Naruto, if you can successfully make twenty bars of properly-shaped White Day chocolate by the end of the day, I'll...I'll..."
He took a deep breath, like he was agreeing to sacrifice his limbs. "I'll...pay for two weeks' worth of yours and Hinata's ramen expenses."
Oh my.
That's worse than sacrificing his limbs, Sakura thought. Poor Iruka-sensei...
Iruka-sensei's hands were twitching, like they couldn't believe how narrowly they had dodged a bullet.
"All right!" Naruto's gloominess vanished, to be replaced with a bright smile, as though the clouds had cleared to make way for the sun. "Let's go, Iruka-sensei!"
Sakura's eyes crinkled at the sight of Naruto puttering around the kitchen, looking gleeful at the thought of two weeks of free ramen and subjecting them to his culinary eyesores.
Yeah, she could definitely picture Hinata's radiant smile.
Even if Naruto fed her objects that belonged in a horror museum.
A/N: Based on a line from the Naruto Retsuden light novel, in which Naruto says that right before he got married, Iruka-sensei and Sakura taught him how to cook. :)
I was reading some of the suggested prompts for NaruHina Week this year, and one of them was "home cooking." Well, home cooking didn't make it into the list of selected prompts, but it is a cute idea, so here! I wanted to somehow include this into my stuff for the official week, but that was a bit tough for me, as I had already finished writing all the prompts last week, so I split it into a different story.
The idea of Naruto's cooking tasting good but looking terrible is inspired by "Drunken Gentle Fist" by AngelAnimefan. The line in that story about his French toast somehow looking like an eight-year-old's failed science experiment makes me laugh all the time. :)
Please enjoy and review. :)