notes: revised! (8/9/19)
rating: K
disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
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27. haircut
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Sakura's petite hands delicately uses her scissors to clip at the unruly tips of her husband's hair. A smile reflecting some small traces of ambiance etches across Sasuke's lips, as evident of the slight curl at the corners. It is a smile he'd seen many times on her face; he was so familiar with it on his wife's peachy features—and it in turn causes his own pair to quirk just right amount, a few millimeters like a domino effect gone right, but it doesn't go past Sakura's eyes as she peers at his face for just a silent moment at the mirror. The floor beneath them became rather littered with hair strands that plunged from the trimmings of Sasuke's hair, and Sakura very nearly rolls her eyes at the inevitable tiresome cleanup she'd be doing later. No doubt, those little strands would give the broom a field day: it'd stick close to the broom straws and she would have to give stubborn shakes over the trashcan for them to finally fall.
"Just a little bit more, alright?" she tells him, her fingers enthusiastically snipping the air with the scissors as her other hand carries the thin comb.
Somewhere along the line of convincing him to have his hair trimmed and she had been the one to volunteer rather reluctantly at first (Who remembered that the hair salon closed today? Honest mistake, yeesh!), Sakura eventually sucummed to the alarming fact that it was pretty fun to make snips and snaps at Sasuke's hair. His hair was strange—there were slight curls at the bottom tips, slightly pointy and she'd wonder if he ever gave hair gel a try before. She thinks about his hair, too, when she looks at Sarada: both dark and neat, yet slightly spiky at the end tips.
Right beside her, Sarada is seated directly still, smile lingering within her eyes as her lips is merely upward by a few centimeters. In her hands is a small supply box, literally littered with Sakura's own personal combs, hairbrushes, and even some hairspray Sarada and Sasuke didn't even knew existed. Amusement in her eyes, Sarada particularly enjoys being the right-hand assistant, if only to see the brief uneasiness in Sasuke's eyes when he sometimes flickered a gaze at those horrendously-taunting scissors of hers that she brandished with determination. He had sat there for a while, and Sarada had seen statues tilt more by turbulent winds than him on this chair.
"...Right."
From her peripheral, Sakura sees him eye her scissors again. "Sarada, I need some water sprayed over here, ASAP," Sakura whispers in a mock-conspiratorially tone to her daughter as she combs through Sasuke's hair.
"Roger, Mama!" The incessant stifling of Sakura's chuckles and Sasuke's silent eye rolls comes so naturally as Sarada grabs a small spray bottle to splash some water at his hair. "Papa, you look like a wet dog."
Some water plops onto the cover they put him under to prevent stray hairs sticking to his clothes. Sasuke stares at how the water drips and drips from the ends of his hair, half-a-mind to move his hand to wring a stubborn droplet that'd been determined to stick than drip. "Wet dog?" He'd been reduced to a mongrel? Kakashi-sensei pops into his mind not too shortly, him and his dumb book and that pack of dogs he watches over.
In a spur, Sakura snatches the bottle of water and sprays once at Sasuke's profile—and miraculously, it misses his eye and the water favored his whole right cheek. "Now he looks like one!" There is mischief in her eyes and she's smiling because she knows that he knows of her intentions and that he would totally let her slide, which is the truth and he's mildly disappointed that he couldn't do anything about it. "That's what you get for doubting my incredible snipping skills!" She snips the air again for emphasis, the scissors proudly latched on her fingers. "Don't think I didn't see those glances."
Sarada plays along for a moment, "Shame, Papa..." Her head shakes.
He merely moves his hand to grab a towel nearby and pats his face, knowing that him moving spited her.
"I said not to move!" he hears her whine behind him, determined to scowl at him disapprovingly.
Sasuke shrugs, spiting her more.
She huffs, then goes back to resume her snips and snaps again with great care. Sarada herself is entertained that her parents would act this way, particularly her father because he just didn't smile so easily nor did she thought he had it in him to spite for fun. It doesn't seem like him at all. "On the bright side, at least Mama has the most experience out of all of us," she says after a while of hearing the snips. "I remember when you kept volunteering to cut my hair when I was younger." From impulses, Sarada's hand lightly trails against the tips of her own hair.
"It saves money, y'know," Sakura replies with a laugh and it spills nostalgia everywhere. "You were too young to go to a hair salon—you barely had any hair at all! I might as well get the job done myself."
Sarada gives her an absentminded glance. "I bet you had fun when you did." Her memories can recall her Mama smiling as she snipped. "You must've cut hair a lot to have the experience, right?"
Having been quietly listening, Sasuke focuses on Sakura's face. "Well..." she begins, slowly, eyes never leaving Sasuke's hair as she does her work. "You could say that?" She hums for a moment. "My very first time cutting my hair was... messy." Sakura thinks of dark forests, herself stained with dirt, her eye bruising, scratches on her limbs, pain on her scalp as someone grabbed her hair from behind, and she distinctly remembers a kunai. She thinks of Sasuke's dark eyes that day—they'd been darker than the coal that weapon-smiths use for their work. They'd been so, so dark. Then she thinks of Ino and how she kept scrambling to fix Sakura's mess of her hair and gave snide comments in intervals of seconds, that she lost track of, that Sakura, you are stupid for doing that. Stop worrying me. Although focused on her scissors, Sakura responds, "Aunt Ino had to fix it up for me. She said my cutting was lame—can you believe it?!"
"Actually, I can."
"Hey!"
"Is that why you had long hair when I was little?"
Sasuke raises an eyebrow. She had kept her hair short when he left on his mission years ago; she'd bade him goodbye with those short strands framing her face and he'd always remember that look.
She laughs instead, and it sounds pretty. "Would you believe me if I told you that there was a big rumor spreading around that your Papa liked girls with long hair?"
Sarada's eyes widen a bit, but not too much. "Really?"
"It was before you were born," Sakura informs, amused and nostalgic and terribly humored by how Sasuke alarmingly looks at her. Those rumors were stupid; she had been a fool to fall for them and groomed her hair as best as she could as she grew up, until it was long and swishing behind her back. Sometimes Sakura missed having long hair—it made her feel pretty for once, even if it had been grown for rather selfish purposes in her childhood. "Papa was really popular with the girls back then and eventually, someone started a rumor that he preferred girls with long hair. The next day, nearly every girl in the Academy were determined to grow out their hair!"
"Did yo—"
Sakura wastes no time to confirm the inevitable, "Mama did. Grew it all the way down to my back." She places her scissors down and proceeds to comb Sasuke's hair, unsure if he looked like he wanted to vanish or was tired or a mix of both that she decided to dwell on old, old stupid rumors that he found all too annoying. "But then I cut it during a mission and it's always been short from there." She talks casually, but Sasuke could tell how much of the truth she'd hidden, truths she didn't feel that comfortable talking about because the past is the past.
"So, why did you grow it out again when I was born?" Sarada places the scissors into the materials box softly, ears attentive.
Sakura smiles, her eyes looking past Sasuke's hair, his shoulders, until she meets his gaze in the mirror. "I thought if I grew my hair back out again, then maybe Papa would come back home and tell me to change it." One of the corners of her lips curl upward even more, only for a second, and then Sakura readies to remove the cover off his body, swaying it in the air slightly to shake off the stray hair sticking to it. "Well, looks like you're all set to go now! Sarada, could you put these away for me?"
Standing up, Sarada takes the materials box and the cover with a nod. "Sure thing."
When the two are alone, Sasuke simply tells her, "Short hair suits you best."
She embraces him from behind. "I like it that way too."
