notes: revised! (7/9/19)
rating: K
disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
.
.
24. shampoo
.
.
When Sarada passed by Sasuke on her way to her room after dinner, he had to halt. A familiar scent whisks by his nostrils, and he almost thought for a moment that it was Sakura passing by and not their daughter.
"Papa?" Sarada had seen the way he'd paused, how the sound of his steady footfalls came to an end so abruptly that she couldn't help but look to see if her Papa vanished or not. "What's wrong?"
It takes Sasuke a couple seconds to fish out a sentence. "You smell different." He always made it a point to be careful of his surroundings; he'd sniff out anything suspicious and his eyes would pass a nook or cranny and he'd deem it safe to walk down the hallways of his own home. Surely, no one was stupid enough to invade his home and territory, but Sasuke liked to stay careful—he has people to protect. They can take care of themselves, but it's from his own willingness that drives him to safeguard the things that made him happy, people who've made him happy.
"Smell?" A towel resting on her shoulders, Sarada looked quite different, so normal, without her glasses when she's fresh out of the bath. "Oh, I ran out of shampoo, so I borrowed some of Mama's."
Ocean. It smelled of oceans. "Ah," grunts Sasuke in return, issuing a nod. But he didn't want to leave her with just that and Kakashi's (stupid) advice on bonding kept prodding him, so he tells her, "...It's nice on you." Kakashi had advised terms of endearment, but Sasuke didn't know how to begin with that—or if he should even continue with that. He'd began with the name 'Peanut' and he felt his heart cracking when she gave him a scowl and frowned at him and even called him annoying. Fatherhood is new to Sasuke; he sourly didn't know how to begin being a father, it was hard to when he didn't exactly experienced the best memories Fugaku gave him growing up. She even rejected his cloak!
An eyebrow skeptically arched upward on Sarada's face, her hands gripping on the ends of the towel around her shoulders. "Er... Thanks, Papa?" A drop of water dripped from a loose strand of her hair and she snaps out of it. "Good night; I'm going to sleep in early for tomorrow."
"A mission?"
She gives a little shrug. "Konohamaru-sensei said it was a team gathering, so I don't think so. It starts in the morning."
Allowing her to go back to her room for needed sleep, Sasuke decided to venture to the kitchen—Sakura is there, lining up dishes at the sink and prepping up a sponge and dish soap. It didn't feel right for him to do nothing, so he approaches until he's next to her, idly taking a spare towel to wipe some of the plates she soaked. "You don't have to—" Sakura begins, but he cuts in.
"I want to," she watches him say, simply, his hand never fumbling as he diligently wipes at the plate to dryness.
When he was finished with one plate, Sasuke places the towel down, uses his hand to stack the plate on the other side of him, then rinse and repeat. Sakura found some peace in this, their silence evident yet it felt so nice to be doing something with him together, even if that something was boringly cleaning plates. He didn't even wear his glove; he liked that glove, she remembers. When she rinses off the final thing needed to be washed—a petite bowl she'd used to carry the soy sauce—Sakura eyes his sleeve, nearly worryingly. "You have some stains." Water stains would dry within the hour, but she recalled a soap bubble or two (or three; she used too much soap) straying over to him.
"It'll dry," he says back, doing his best to dry off the bowl with one hand, and it didn't seem like it was troubling him.
She'd turned her eyes back to the sink, ready to submerse the rest of the dirtied water down the drain with her plastic gloves in tact, but then a few bubbles were carried off her the moment she'd lifted her hands from the water. Some popped straight away, others flew to her right, and others flew to Sasuke again. "Oops! I'm sorry!"
So she says, but she gives a little giggle at the end and he didn't seem to mind. "Glad to see one of us is having fun." For her, he wears his amused smirk—it's a tad bit lopsided, but she thought it's cute on him, endearing even.
"It's not often I see you being blasted with bubbles," Sakura chuckles as she makes sure the water was properly drained and that her gloves were dried before she removes them. Sasuke liked to see her hands more than the unflattering plastic gloves that came to her elbow. "I could use a bath." She wiggles her hands despite them being dry.
He remarks, afterward, "Sarada said you let her use your shampoo."
She's mildly surprised, but she smiles nonetheless. "Yeah! She said she ran out. Why you ask?"
She looks at him and he thinks about spring, about the sea's scent of her shampoo, and then he'd think of a cliff that had a bench in front of the ocean. That had been where he took her out on their first date—then he'd lost his nerves and gave some half-assed excuse and he'd vanished in a puff of smoke and he still felt rather guilty because he just left her sitting there. Sasuke wonders if she was ever mad at him for that; that leaving her on a bench twice would break some kind of nerve in her, but it never did and she welcomed him back after a few days of hiding and then he'd wonder how did he ever earned her heart.
"Just wondering," he goes to answer her with. His back turns to her and he lazily walks out of the kitchen, down the corridor of where the bedroom is. "It smells nice."
