Sasuke doesn't like crowds, just like his father. They're too loud, too sweaty, and too often cause him a migraine. He isn't the only one scowling in this auditorium.

Sasuke tries to stretch his legs, and shakes his head when he remembers he's too tall for the aisles. He is cramped, his messy hair itches beneath his cap, and his shoes are too tight, no thanks to his mother who insisted he wear the dressy ones. Instead, he shifts and squirms until he's in another uncomfortable position, only to cross and uncross his legs when he decides both are equally restricting.

To Sasuke's left is a stranger, a mousy girl with a bejeweled cap and a septum piercing that looks like it hurt, and to his right is a boy in his business seminar who has yet to say a word to him while he fiddles with his timer. Sasuke remains quiet in the middle, staring ahead. Naruto is only a few seats over, in alphabetical order, and he can hear him boisterously telling a story to the people around him, always making friends, always being the center of attention.

Sasuke's phone vibrates, and he checks it with a sigh. There's a lone text from Naruto, asking if he wants to get ramen instead after the ceremony. Sasuke rolls his eyes, ready to slip his phone in his pocket, before it vibrates again. His screen lights up.

Sakura: i can see u grad

Sakura: but u can't see me

Immediately, Sasuke turns around in his seat and looks for pink. His eyes sift through a crowd of friends and family before they settle on a row in the middle where he spots her beautiful hair, and then her green eyes that are staring directly at him. When she realizes he's staring right back, she blushes and looks down at her lap. Sasuke smirks and looks back down at his phone when it vibrates again, and again, and again.

Sakura: face forward!

Sakura: ur gonna miss ur own graduation

Sakura: shhhhhhh it's starting!

True to her word, the music begins blaring through the speakers. Sasuke sits through six speeches, two videos, and twenty letters of the alphabet before they even get to his initial.

Sakura: ur so close

Sasuke: Barely.

Sakura: grump. ur row is next!

Sasuke pockets his phone. His row stands. They walk toward the stage, and Sasuke's hands feel a little clammy. He'd rather be anything but the center of attention.

When he makes it to the stairs leading up to the stage, his name is called.

"Sasuke Uchiha!"

There's a small roar from the crowd as he climbs the stairs and takes his diploma, his mother screaming, his brother clapping, but all he can hear—all he can feel—is Sakura. Sasuke can't see the audience past the lights as he looks toward the sound of her voice, but his heart swells at the sweet sound of her cheers. Sasuke makes his way back to his seat with the sound of his soulmate in his head and warmth in his heart.

When he sits back down, he looks at his phone, and his heart flutters.

Sakura: congrats grad :)


"My baby!" Mikoto squeals, wrapping her youngest son in a suffocating hug. "You're all grown up!"

Sasuke bites back a smile and, with an exaggerated sigh, pats his mother's back. "Relax, Mom."

Pulling away, he can already see the tears forming in her eyes. Before he can even begin to roll his, she starts wiping away at them with a sniffle. Mikoto turns to her husband with a whine, who rolls his own eyes, but gathers his wife in his arms nonetheless. She relaxes the moment he does, and she says, "our babies are getting old."

Fugaku hums in agreement as he rubs his wife's back.

"Congrats, Sasuke," Itachi says with a kind smile of his own. "You didn't seem like the flowers type, so we didn't bother."

"Thank god," he huffs. He feels uncomfortable, watching other families hug around him while his mother bites back tears and his brother and father try not to indulge her. He looks through the crowd and begins to look for pink, and his heart skips a beat. When did he start looking for pink, instead of blonde?

She is first in his mind. He's accepted this now. When he wakes up, she is the first thing he thinks about, and he waits for her 'good morning' text to know she's alive and breathing and, hopefully, happy every morning. He thinks about her when his mind wanders during his seminar, about whether she's eaten, whether she's taken a break from her studies, or whether she's listening to her teachers instead of tagging him in memes on Facebook. He doesn't have to think about her after classes, because he gets to see her, if he so chooses—and he usually does—and he gets to talk to her, until he leaves her, and then he thinks about her, until he texts her goodnight, until he falls asleep to the lull of wavy pink hair and grassy green eyes.

He cares about her, to say the least. He thinks about her too much, to perhaps say the most.

He can't spot her through the crowd. With a frown, he shoots her a text.

Sasuke: Where are you?

Sakura: w the fam

Sakura: where r u mister

Sasuke: Outside.

Sakura: i'll just meet u at the restaurant

Sasuke: I'll drive you.

Sakura: kk will find u :)

And find him she does. He spots her perfectly curled head of pink hair the second she exits the auditorium. At sixteen, Sakura is starting to grow more into her features every day. Her high cheekbones fit her heart-shaped face, and her plush, full lips are always painted pink or red. She's wearing a yellow sundress today, one of his favorites and—he thinks wistfully—perhaps why she's wearing it.

"Sasuke!" she cheers, a pretty smile on her face. She runs toward him and wraps her arms around his waist, enveloping him in a suffocating hug. "Con-grad-ulations. See? See what I did?"

He snorts, wrapping his arms around her. "Thank you."

When she pulls away, she smiles up at him like nobody's watching. Her pretty green eyes sparkle under the setting spring sun and she looks golden outside against the pink and yellow sky. He wants to push her pretty, petal-pink hair behind her ears and cup her heart shaped face.

Sasuke nearly shakes his head. He shouldn't be thinking about things like that. He takes a step away from her with an awkward smile, and pats her shoulder.

Her eyebrows furrow, but she says nothing. He feels sufficiently awkward lately, always trying to put a little more space between them, always keeping her at arm's length. She's still so young, but the older she gets, the closer she tries to be with him.

He just can't handle it.

He'll continue to create space, even if it's awkward, even if they're soulmates. Just until she's ready. And, he has decided, she just isn't ready yet. She might not be for a while, and while he won't tell Sakura that, because she'll just be frustrated and maybe even hurt, he can do her this service. He can put space between them when she can't.

He just wants to watch her grow, and flourish, and with his shadow looming over her, she can't exactly do that. He wants to give her a chance to experience her teenage years, even college—another idea she won't want to hear, waiting until after college. He knows exactly what she expects. Once she turns eighteen, things will be different—but Sasuke isn't sure that's true. He's not sure eighteen is the magic number. He's not sure there's any magic number.

Whenever she's ready, which she isn't.

"Are you ready to go?" she asks, interrupting his train of thought.

He nods his head and hums. He wants to reach for her hand, but he can't, so he settles for trailing behind her towards his car.

"I have a little something for you," she says.

He frowns. "You didn't have to get me anything, Sakura—"

"But it's a big day!" she interrupts him with a cheer. She fishes into her pocket and pulls out a little jewelry box. She shoves it in his hand with a blush. "Open it."

He does, and it's a little, gold graduation cap charm, on a long chain. It's extremely sentimental, and extremely Sakura. Sasuke's lips twitch into a small smile as he stops in front of his car, looking down at the little charm.

He ruffles her hair, and she swats him away. "Don't do that!"

"Thank you," he says, and opens the car door for her. She blushes as pink as her hair. "Let's go, before they wonder what's taking us so long."

Sakura turns even redder. "You don't think they—"

Bright pink, Sasuke interrupts her, "that's not what I meant!"

"Right, of course not!" she squeaks, and slides into Sasuke's sleek, black sedan.

Sasuke's sighs and shuts the door for her. He takes a moment to breathe before crossing to his side of the car. They wouldn't think that, of course. He hopes his family would know that he's absolutely not that type of man, to take advantage of a sixteen-year-old girl. Why her mind would jump right to the gutter, he doesn't know—or maybe he does.

And that thought embarrasses him even more. He slides into his seat, turns on the music, and they wordlessly drive to the restaurant, in varying shades of pink and red.


Mikoto thinks she's sly, but Sasuke already knows what's going on. She's been keeping him out of the house all day, running around doing errands, talking to him frantically. When he thinks they're about ready to go home, she takes him to another store, and just when he's about had it, she takes him grocery shopping.

Where she picks up balloons.

And then, at two-forty-five, she suddenly rushes him home. She insists that they need to get home now. The word late is thrown around, and that's when Sasuke knows for sure.

She's throwing him a surprise party.

"Mom, is something going on?" he asks carefully as she packs their shopping bags hurriedly into the car. "Are you rushing for some… particular reason?"

"Not at all, sweetie," she claims, but he can see she's flustered. "Just go in the car."

"Mom—"

"The car," she says. "Please."

He rolls his eyes, but opens the door nonetheless. "Fine."

It's a quiet ride home. His mom drives maybe a little too fast, and runs a stop sign. "Be careful," he warns.

"Right, right."

When they pull into the house, Sasuke almost rolls his eyes. Naruto's car is right in the driveway, and all around the neighborhood there are cars parked on the sides of the streets, absolutely packed.

"Must be a party," Sasuke muses.

His mother hums in agreement. They pull into the driveway and Mikoto jumps out of the car a little too quickly. Sasuke takes his sweet time, anything to avoid this mess his mother has somehow gotten him into. Sasuke hates parties, almost as much as he hates crowds, and the two often go hand-in-hand.

She starts rushing toward the gate when she gets out, and Sasuke calls after her suspiciously, "what about the bags?"

"You can forget those, dear," she insists. "Just follow me."

He raises an eyebrow. "Why are we going into the house through the backyard?"

"Uh…." she trails off, and Sasuke can tell she's thinking, before she says, "change of scenery."

Sasuke rolls his eyes. "Let's just get this over with."

Her eyes widen. "I have no idea what you're talking about," she claims, but he can tell from the blush on her cheeks that she's been caught red-handed. She grabs his hand and drags him across the lawn to the gate. She unlocks the latch, and they enter the backyard.

"Surprise!"

Sasuke can feel his heart in his throat. There's only one thing he hates more than crowds: being the center of attention, and that's exactly what he is at this moment. It's as if every single person he's ever met is here, including his extended family, and a suspicious amount of classmates that he's sure Naruto provided the names of.

Sasuke swallows. And then he sees her.

Sakura has a great big smile on her face, standing next to Naruto with her arms open. Sasuke wants to run right into them, let her hold him until he can't remember another person around him. Instead, he stammers a, "thank you," to the crowd before immediately making a bee-line toward the drink table.

Nobody seems to care, or notice. Everyone gathers in their own crowds to begin talking amongst friends, and he can tell that some of his classmates have already imbibed in his mother's thoughtful table of liquor.

Sasuke pours himself a stiff drink, vodka and seltzer, and takes a long sip.

"Can I taste that?"

He turns around at the voice, and finds his soulmate, a cheeky grin on her face. Her hair is pulled back in a braid, and she's wearing a short, pink dress that shows off her creamy legs. She's barefoot, like she usually is, toes curling in the grass. She pushes a loose piece of hair behind her ear, and tilts her head when he doesn't respond.

"Sasuke?"

He smirks, but his cheeks are a little pink from staring. "I don't know how your parents would feel about that, Sakura."

She rolls her eyes. "What they don't know won't hurt 'em!"

"Have you ever even had a drink before?" he asks.

She shrugs. "I had a beer at one of Karin's parties once."

His eyes narrow, because what is this little flower of a girl doing at parties with beer, and why didn't he know about this? Isn't she a little too young for high school parties?

Sasuke ignores the tiny voice in his head reminding him what he and Naruto got up to when they were sixteen.

"And?"

"It was nasty," she admits.

"Vodka is worse." Despite this, Sasuke hands over his drink to Sakura, and she takes it graciously.

She takes a long sip, and the look on her face is absolutely priceless.

She nearly spits it right out of her mouth, which Sasuke can admit is what he nearly did when he took his first shot. He rolls his eyes. "Not a fan?"

"This is disgusting." She shoves it back into his hands. "What's wrong with you?"

He shrugs. "Feels good."

"A lot of things feel good, but it doesn't mean we should do them."

That could mean anything. There are a lot of things that Sasuke wants to do that feel good, and most of those things include Sakura. He wants to hold her hand because he feels sparks. He wants to wrap his arm around her because she's deliciously warm. He wants to play with her hair because it's soft and neatly brushed. Instead, he takes a step back.

"You should go find your friends," he says.

A look of hurt flashes across her face, but it's fleeting, and immediately replaced with a winning smile. "Don't drink too much!" she calls as she turns away, stepping back into the crowd.

He rolls his eyes, and takes a long sip.


Sasuke is dizzy by the early evening. He feels a soft buzz in his mind, and the world is a little blurrier, a little softer. Naruto's voice is a little less loud, and grading. Itachi is a little less annoying.

Sakura is endlessly, unbelievably, ridiculously beautiful.

Not that he doesn't notice that when he's sober, but it's a little harder to hide five or seven or nine drinks in. Her hair is a sweet halo around her pretty, heart-shaped face. Her legs are long and pale, lavender under the moonlight. Her smile glows beneath the nighttime sky. He wants to count every freckle on her face like the stars in the sky, but instead he stares at his phone in his hands, trying his hardest not to let his mind wander.

The crowd has dissipated, and now only a few family and friends linger. Sasuke sits alone on a lounge chair, nursing his, maybe, final drink. He can see Naruto and his brother boisterously talking about something he doesn't care enough to find out about, hands moving and drinks spilling over.

"I guess you're not giving me a ride home, huh?"

Sakura sits down on the lounge next to him, perfectly sober and devastatingly gorgeous. Sasuke swallows, hard. "Sorry," he mumbles.

"Mikoto already offered me the guest room," she says with a smile. "Naruto isn't driving any time soon, either."

His lips twitch into a smile. He hums in agreement. He takes another sip of his drink and Sakura immediately giggles.

"Haven't you had enough?" she asks, but she's teasing, a pleasant little playfulness that he adores.

He snorts. "Not nearly."

Sakura reaches for his hand, and he lets her take it. Her hands are warm, and soft, and so small in his own. He wants to take care of this small creature, protect her from everything.

God, he loves her.

He snatches his hand out of hers and frowns. "We can't, Sakura."

He sees the hurt, again, in her eyes, and it isn't fleeting. "I was only holding your hand."

"We can't," he repeats. "You're too young—"

"But I'm your soulmate—"

"Sakura," he interrupts, final. "It's inappropriate. You're sixteen."

"But—but I…" she trails off, and that's when he sees the tears begin to stream down her face. "But I love you."

Sasuke has to bite back the words that bubble in his throat, to tell her the same thing right back. It's on the tip of his tongue, ready to air out into the world. Instead, he apologizes and fights back tears.

Sakura doesn't say anything. She stalks off toward her brother, and Sasuke is alone.