prompt: children (as suggested by red. masenko, thanks a bunch!)
summary: love is easy. it's only difficult because you make it difficult.
Teaching is, Sakura discovers, much more draining and much more difficult than she had originally assumed.
I knew I should have signed up for secondary school, she thinks to herself. I knew it.
The kindergarteners scramble to and fro as the bell rings, and they drop their things to race to their cubbies and grab their jackets and outdoor shoes for recess.
And once they're gone, once it's quiet, finally quiet, she heaves a sign of relief and collapses in her chair.
A quiet laugh behind her. "Exhausting, isn't it?"
She spins in her chair to look at Uchiha Itachi, the proper teacher in this classroom. "How do you do it, senpai?"
He shrugs. "I compensate, here and there."
It's been three days of Sakura being Itachi's student teacher, and it has been more disastrous than anything. She's gotten paint in her hair, her toes stepped on, and screamed at so much that her ears are always ringing by the end of the day.
Fifteen minutes of recess is nowhere near long enough of a break.
"Field trip next week," Itachi reminds her offhandedly, wiping off the chalkboard. "To the museum."
She sighs. "Yeah."
"I'll send you the itinerary tonight."
"Okay, thanks."
Itachi works, quietly, writing down things on the board: big block numbers, each one in a different color of chalk. For the quiet and introverted man he is, he makes a fantastic kindergarten teacher, all smiles and laughter when children are around. He's like a completely different person. He would make a good father, she thinks.
"If you don't mind me asking, senpai," Sakura says then, wringing her hands together and spinning on her chair so she doesn't have to look at him. "When I'm done my practicum here—once I've gotten my license and I'm a proper teacher…would you mind—I mean, if you'd like—maybe, to have dinner with me?"
The scratching of chalk on slate. "Are you by any chance, Sakura, asking me out?"
She swallows, and her voice comes out as shy, meek. "Would it be alright if I was?"
He laughs quietly. "That's a breach of conduct."
"Which is why I said when this is over—"
The bell rings and she jumps in her seat. Recess is over.
"You should go collect the kids," Itachi says softly. She sneaks a glance at him, and he's still drawing on the board, apples and oranges and pears in groups of ones, twos, and threes—simple numbers for simple lives, and she almost wishes having a massive crush on her mentor would be something like that. Except it's not, of course.
"Yeah," she mutters, standing up. "I will."
"Oh, and Sakura"—and she turns away and stares, with this blinding, aching hope—"ask me again, when you're done your practicum. I'll think about it then."
She nods, a little too eager, a little too happy. "Okay. I will. I definitely will." And she races off to fetch the kids who are already lining up in single file outside, acting akin to a kid herself.
(Later, during playtime, some of the girls drag her and Itachi to play house with them—"Because Itachi-sensei is a proper boy, not like the other boys who don't want to play with us!"—and they shove dolls in their hands, Itachi the dad and Sakura the mom, and make them hold hands, and laugh, and pretend to be their children and asking for playdates and cookies and a later bedtime. Itachi and Sakura play along willingly, smiles on their faces—but her hand, loose in Itachi's, accidentally twitches, and she feels him give her a light squeeze and yes, having a massive crush on her mentor really is that simple. It really is.)
A/N: I apparently have this really bad habit of forgetting that I actually have chapters lined up to post.
I have more or less all of your prompts listed out, but it's not really a matter of first come first serve as it is a whichever-inspires-me-first kind of schedule. Anyone else who writes will understand that, and if you don't, then I'm sorry anyway because I suck. D: