Sakura doesn't hear Sasuke come back home that night. In the morning she still feels terrible about it, no matter how many times she tries to convince herself that she didn't do anything wrong. They don't speak about it when they see each other in the following days and she keeps wondering how much Sasuke really heard and what he thinks about her dating someone. Why does she even care? Surely he doesn't care, he never cared about her anyway. He probably left the apartment because of the noise and not because she was with someone. She cannot help but pay more attention to him when she sees him, to see if he is acting differently or if he will mention her late-night visitor, but he doesn't.
Sasuke focuses back on his work. Sakura surely didn't realize that he was home that night. He doesn't want to make a scene talking to her about it. There is nothing to talk about anyway. He picks up escort missions that keep him out of the village the following week. None of the C-rank missions he gets actually require a lot of skills and he can spend most of his time reflecting as he walks alongside a spice merchant or a local political figure who paid for Konoha's protection. A lot of clients think they are much more important than they actually are, and the escorts are never really dangerous. People who do have a serious risk of being attacked during their travel usually request a much higher rank of protection. Twice, during missions, Sasuke gets to pull out his sword and scare the living hell out of mediocre highway robbers, but these incidents aren't enough to make the days interesting, and he hopes to be soon trusted with higher assignments that do not require him to lead cows or to listen to a speech about the price of paprika for thirty miles.
When he comes home between two missions he is still happy to find his room in Sakura's apartment. His latest attempts at finding a place for himself have failed and him being out of the village in the past week has not helped. Sakura mentions that since neither of them is home very often, it's fine for him to stay, and he is a bit too relieved to hear it. Sakura seems to have resumed her usual shifts without other nightly visits, and Sasuke almost forgets about the other man. He starts thinking that it might have been a one-time event, and he is quite happy with this thought, until one evening, when he notices that Sakura is busy after she came back from work. He hears her fussing in the bathroom for long minutes and when he comes out of his bedroom he is surprised to find her right in front of him in the entryway.
Sakura has her back to him, bent over to tie her shoes. She's putting on high heels, attaching a sparkling strap around her ankle. Sasuke's eyes go up her calves, her thighs, the short hem of her red dress, the curve of her hips, and the line of her back. She straightens up and turns towards him and her hair bounces around her face in supple waves. He had not noticed that her hair was so long and it could curl in such a mesmerizing way over her shoulders. Her face looks different as well. Her eyes look brighter, her cheekbones higher, her lips pinker. He was about to ask her what she was doing in the bathroom but he doesn't need to ask anymore. He usually sees her with a quick ponytail, a messy bun, bed hair in the morning or sweaty hair after training. He sees her in her jonin jacket, her doctor coat, her sweatpants, her pajamas. Now he stands there in front of her and his brain is blank, only filled with the sight of her red dress and the blush of her cheeks. He had not realized how much she has changed since they were kids.
"Hey," she says, as she picks up her keys from a bowl on the kitchen counter.
"You're going out?" he asks. What a stupid question, of course she is, she didn't dress up to stay home or to go to work.
She nods. "Yeah, erm…" she seems briefly embarrassed and looks away from him to grab her purse. "I had a small promotion at the hospital, Toshi's taking me to a nice restaurant."
Sasuke does his best to keep a neutral face. Still. Toshi… What a dumb name. He should congratulate her. He can't find the words.
She frowns when she sees that he is being unnaturally stoic. "Are you ok?" she asks. "Did you eat today? There are leftovers in the fridge, you can eat them, they'll go bad otherwise."
He doesn't reply. The idea that a man is going out with Sakura and he himself is staying home and eating leftovers is humiliating. When she leaves the apartment, the swing of the front door behind her sends him a full cloud of her perfume and the scent makes his chest burn.
Sakura meets with Ino the next morning when they get together to train, which they try to do every week if their schedules align.
"Someone's in a bad mood," Ino says as soon as she sees her, their many years of friendship let her read Sakura's mind better than any family jutsu. And Sakura isn't trying to hide it. The disappointment from the night before made her so bitter that she struggled to sleep after coming home, and now she isn't in the best mood to start the day.
"Yesterday Toshi told me to dress up," she tells Ino as she pulls her hair to tie it up. "He said he was taking me to a fancy place for dinner."
Ino's eyes are sparkling for the next gossip. "Yeah?"
"I pulled out the red dress."
"Nice…" Ino says with an appreciative eyebrow raise. "How was it?"
"He took me to Ichiraku's!" Sakura blurts with frustration. "I was like an idiot with my dress and heels at Ichiraku's."
She reddens in embarrassment at the memory of herself, her satin dress, her high heels, and her blow dry, sitting on the greasy high stools at Ichiraku's while a family of four and a team of jonins glanced at her sideways, wondering why she was dressed for a cocktail party to eat at the local food joint. In the heat of July she didn't have a jacket to cover her shoulders and tone down her look. And Toshi was completely oblivious to her discomfort and ignored all her requests to leave early and go home. She eventually paid the bill and walked home by herself, looking at the sidewalk and walking as fast as possible to avoid the late-night stares at her bare legs.
Ino understands and doesn't rub it in. "Why are you still seeing him?" she asks seriously.
Sakura squirms. "Sometimes he's nice... He wanted to pay for my meal yesterday, he just forgot his wallet."
"Wow. He almost paid for a quick bowl of ramen. Husband material right there."
"I like dating him, we have a good time when we're together, usually."
Ino scoffs. "You, a jonin, a doctor, a medic-nin, always running around saving people, you see yourself with a boring shop assistant? I don't even trust him to keep the shop open on my lunch break..."
"You set me up with him!"
"I meant to have a bit of fun at night, not to marry him!"
"So what? I feel good with him. I know he's not going to… to…" Sakura searches for her words.
"... Rebel against the whole world and try to kill you?"
Sakura looks away.
Ino shrugs and nods. "Can't blame you."
When Sakura comes home after training, Sasuke is in the kitchen.
"How was it? Yesterday?" he asks when he sees her.
She blanks. Of all people, he is the last one she expected to ask her about her date. He's probably just asking to be polite. When did he start to be polite? Is he making fun of her?
She gives a fake smile. "It was nice. Yeah. Really nice."
He nods, but when their eyes meet it feels like he can see right through her lie. He doesn't look like he wanted to tease her. She was a fool to think that Toshi would actually take her to a fancy restaurant anyway. She feels stupid. She just wants to be alone.
She shakes her head. "No, actually it wasn't great," she says. "Sorry, I'm tired."
Sasuke seems surprised but she retires to her bedroom before he can say anything. Why does she still feel so strange around him?
There is no sign of Shikamaru coming back to the office as he has apparently given in to the adoration of his new bundle of joy, or died under a pile of dirty diapers, and so Sasuke finds himself on office work duty more often than he would like. He has been forbidden from taking all the available C-rank missions that were left, and he would rather do paperwork than pick up a D-rank job and clean cattle stables all day, which he already knows is very complicated to do with only one arm.
He comes home late several days in a row, tired with mental fatigue more than physical. On Friday Sakura is already home when he arrives, and a strong aroma of hot food in the apartment makes his stomach growl. She is on the couch watching TV and turns around to look at him over the backrest when he takes off his shoes. She has sauce on her face.
"I ordered too much food," she says as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and spreads the sauce on her cheek. "Do you want some?"
He comes up to her to see what she is eating. The smell is hot and salty, mouthwatering. He eyes the bags and boxes on the coffee table. She did indeed order way too much food for a single person, the order even came with three pairs of chopsticks and several servings of sauce. There's no reason to let the food go to waste while it's still steaming. He sits down and grabs a pair of chopsticks.
"What is it?" he asks.
"It's from the new place behind Ichiraku's," Sakura says with her mouth full. "I love it."
He nods and takes a bite, but after a few seconds, he stops chewing. The taste of hot spices makes him regret that he took such a big bite. The burn blooms on his tongue and his lips. The sting goes up his nose and it feels like it even reaches his eyelids.
"Oh yeah it's spicy, sorry," Sakura says. He tries to reply but chokes and coughs. She watches him struggle with concern. "Are you ok?"
He feels the heat on his cheeks. "Spicy" is an awful euphemism to describe the fused lava of chili pepper that is eating at his tongue and cheeks. A single mouthful of noodles made his whole face flush and his mouth hurt more than when he breathes out an actual ball of fire.
"Here," Sakura says to get his attention. She holds a bite of white rice up to his mouth and he eats it off her chopsticks. The blandness of the rice helps soothe the pain on his tongue. He accepts a second bite that she offers him. It's only a few seconds later when he looks up at her and she's still looking at him with worry that he realizes that he let her feed him with her chopsticks. She still has sauce on her cheeks. He should find it disgusting and judge her for not being able to eat properly, but he doesn't. She wipes her cheeks and licks her lips, visibly unbothered by the spices, and he cannot stop looking at her.
"Do you want some of this?" she asks as she sticks her chopsticks into another box. "It's a bit less spicy."
She holds another bite up for him to taste and he feels himself become even more red and flustered.
He shakes his head. "I'll stick to the rice."
Sasuke soon realizes that the spicy food is not the only thing he needs to be wary of in Sakura's apartment. A few times he notices a tiny white and blue slug in her kitchen when Sakura is there, and he has to be careful not to step or put his hand on it if he doesn't want to be sprayed with acid. He regularly finds containers from the hospital in the fridge that are labeled "DO NOT EAT" and look like they contain a strange bloody blob or a moldy fungus. Sakura calls them "samples". She forbids him to eat the food pills that she makes herself and that smell like roasted almonds, arguing that it's not almonds but cyanide. She keeps small plants next to her window that produce spiky leaves and bright red berries that he is not allowed to touch either. Her cabinets smell like medicinal herbs and essential oils. One morning before Sasuke is fully awake, Sakura walks past him and eyes the cup of tea he just made for himself.
"What are you drinking?" she asks.
"... Tea?"
She leans in to sniff his cup. "What tea is that?"
"The black one, you were out of the green one. I'll buy more tom-"
She takes the mug from his hand and swiftly empties it into the kitchen sink.
"How much of it did you drink?" she asks quickly.
"One sip."
She grabs his wrist and presses her fingers on the inside to feel his pulse. She remains silent for a few seconds and his mind briefly blanks at the feeling of her touch against his skin.
"... Sakura?..." he eventually asks.
"How do you feel?"
"How am I supposed to feel?"
She lets his wrist go. "You look ok."
"Yeah?"
"In a very small quantity and at the right temperature this tea is a great sleep aid."
The tone in her voice is strange. "What about a full cup?" he asks.
She avoids his gaze and rinses his mug. "You would… sleep for a very long time."
"Why do you have this in your kitchen?"
"I made a batch for the ANBU and kept a bag of it. I use it to sleep sometimes. I make the blend myself, it's pretty powerful. And it's undetectable," she adds with a satisfied smile. She looks proud. There is something mischievous in her eyes that reminds him that she is a shinobi, and while most of her days are spent healing people, she can also work the other way around. He likes that.
He looks at the clean mug on the sink. "I could've died," he says blandly.
Her face changes to an irked frown. "Yeah well, why are you sneaking in my cabinets? Buy your own tea."
The next day Sasuke drops the largest bag of tea he could find at the local shop on Sakura's kitchen table before heading to the Hokage tower. He manages to negotiate a three-day mission outside of the village, which is only a C-rank one, but will let him escape a mountainous pile of paperwork. In the evening he packs up his gear, reviews the mission scroll, and gets ready to leave, but when he opens the front door he finds Sakura and a man on the doorstep, about to come in.
The man looks at Sasuke, and Sasuke needs a few seconds to remember where he has seen him before. He is the guy who works for Ino Yamanaka at the flower shop. Some mornings Sasuke walks down the main street on his way to the Hokage tower and sees him doing a very poor job of sweeping the front step of the shop. What is he doing at Sakura's apartment? Is he bringing a message from Ino? Sasuke looks at Sakura but she avoids his gaze. The man tries to take her hand but Sakura moves away in embarrassment.
Sasuke understands and it hits him like a branch in the face. The man who comes home late at night with Sakura, who follows her to her bedroom and makes her moan, it's him. He is the one who takes her out on dates where she dresses up and gets disappointed. This guy, who looks so bland he could be part of the furniture, sleeps with Sakura. For days Sasuke had imagined a mysterious lover, probably a doctor, or a jonin, an ANBU maybe, someone strong and talented like Sakura, someone exceptional, someone he might consider a rival. And now he is at the door, standing in front of the most ordinary-looking, dull guy he has ever seen. "Toshi" looks weak and clumsy, his T-shirt is too large, his hair is greasy, and his saggy shoulders make him stand a good head shorter than Sasuke. The idea that this guy gets to join her in her bed and touch her makes Sasuke's stomach twist.
Toshi tries to wrap his arm around Sakura's waist and she swiftly moves away from his touch. She glances at Sasuke, and for a second she looks like she's going to introduce him.
"I erm–" she starts.
"I was leaving," Sasuke cuts in curtly, and he walks out the door between them without turning back.
His annoyance doesn't die down once he is out of the village and he eventually summons Aoda, with the excuse of needing a means of transportation for the mission, to vent his frustration out loud.
"He's not even a shinobi, he's a helper at the flower shop. What is she doing with him?"
"Maybe he didn't try to destroy the village, and he didn't try to kill her, and didn't go to jail and she finds that attractive?" Aoda asks.
Sasuke rolls his eyes. "She tried to kill me too, ok?"
"You have a lot of things in common already."
Sasuke hmpfs and turns his back to Aoda to walk ahead alone.
"When there are several males for one female," Aoda hisses quietly behind him, "they fight, and the stronger male eats the weaker one."
"Yeah," Sasuke deadpans. "I'll just start eating people." He shakes his head. "We're not fighting for a female. Sakura's an adult and she's dating him, that's all."
"Is he stronger than you?"
Sasuke briefly considers how many tens of seconds he'd need to take Toshi down. The thought is very pleasant. "No."
"If he settles in her nest, he will spend the mating season with her."
"Yeah, whatever," Sasuke mumbles bitterly.
"I thought you would not like it."
"I don't care."
"You sounded concerned by the issue."
Sasuke kicks into a rock and walks ahead faster. "I'm not."
He cannot stop sulking in the following days. Only at the end of the week does Kakashi bring good news that slightly lightens his mood.
"The council approved you being sent on more important missions," Kakashi says.
Sasuke straightens up and gives a satisfied nod. He has tried to keep a low profile and accept whatever he was given, but he was getting impatient to be given more responsibilities and travel further outside of the village again. As much as he enjoys the comfort of being back home and tolerates the short escort missions, he craves the big spaces, the mountains, the rivers, and the starry sky far from the lights of the villages. And he has done enough cattle jobs to open his own farming business.
"... But only if you're supervised by a jonin," Kakashi adds and Sasuke's shoulders drop.
He twitches in frustration. Konoha's jonins are decently trained, but the few of them that are actually gifted join the ANBU, and the teams of jonins are hardly ever actually given important missions, especially in times of peace. Working with a jonin will be like dragging a dead weight, even more so if the dead weight is the one in charge. The mere idea that he will have to follow orders from someone else is annoying. He wants to complain, but Kakashi speaks again before he can protest.
"There's only one jonin who can keep up with you and who I'm almost sure isn't in danger around you."
The office door flies open and Sasuke flinches.
"SASKE!" Naruto hits him on the shoulder with enthusiasm. "They said they'd give me a genin to supervise, at first I thought it was weird, you know? But then they told me it was you!"
Sasuke squints. "You're a jonin?"
Naruto nods. "Kakashi said they wouldn't let me become Hokage if I didn't graduate. I'll be a nice captain you know, don't worry," he adds with a brash grin.
Sasuke shakes his head bitterly and looks back at Kakashi. "I'm not doing this."
"Oh that's sad…" Kakashi says with a fake sorry voice. "That's a Hokage order," he adds with a tone that leaves no room for negotiation as he throws the mission scroll to Naruto. "Dismissed."
The mission is not as bad as Sasuke liked to pretend it would be. Naruto takes it very seriously and has excellent insight. Sasuke can see that he has been working hard in the past years and has gained patience and maturity. Once they are out of the village they work as a pair and not as a supervisor and pupil, and Sasuke actually finds it pleasant not to work alone. In fact, he is really glad that Naruto is the one with him, anyone else would have slowed him down.
Still, Naruto is an inexhaustible chatterbox, and at the end of the day Sasuke's ears are buzzing when he tries to sleep by the campfire, while Naruto takes the first watch. Naruto can talk for hours about the mission, the weather, his wife, or Ichiraku ramen, and his stamina never goes down. Sasuke eventually only half listens, until a name draws his attention.
"I saw Sakura yesterday," Naruto says. "At Ino's shop."
Sasuke was thinking about Sakura too. It's probably the setting, that reminds him of times when they went on missions together as a genin team, except Sakura is missing now. Or maybe it's just that he thinks about Sakura quite often lately, for no reason. He doesn't reply. Naruto is used to his silence.
"She was with that dude," he resumes. "I think they've been dating."
Naruto is staring at him like he expects a reaction. After long seconds Sasuke twitches in annoyance.
"So what?" he mumbles.
"Nothing. I just think he's kind of dumb."
"That's rich coming from you."
"I wanted to buy flowers for Hinata and he tried to sell me those flowers for tombstones even though I told him that she wasn't dead, you know?"
Sasuke holds back a small laugh of contempt. "So?"
"I didn't think Sakura would go for a guy like him, that's all."
"She does whatever she wants."
"Maybe it's because no one else asked her out before he did."
Sasuke can feel the weight of Naruto's gaze on him. He wraps himself tighter in his cloak and turns on his other side, putting his back to Naruto. "Maybe."
Naruto doesn't mention Sakura again during the rest of their mission. She stays on Sasuke's mind anyway, and he realizes that he is counting the days until he can go back home. He feels an inexplicable impatience to be back, to see her, as if she might have vanished during the time he was away. Unexpected bad weather forces them to stop for a night on their way back and delays their return to the village by one day, and it makes Sasuke unreasonably bitter. Naruto complains that Sasuke is in a foul mood and that he should be the one fretting about being kept away from his pregnant wife, but Sasuke doesn't lighten up and refuses to elaborate.
They eventually make it back to Konoha in the middle of the following night. Sasuke discreetly opens the front door of Sakura's apartment and is surprised to hear noises. The light is turned off in the living room but the colors of the TV screen move on the walls. He takes off his shoes and cloak and walks in silently. Sakura is fast asleep, curled up against the cushions on the couch with the remote in her limp hand and her hair over her eyes. She has not heard him come in over the sound of the TV. There's an empty box of takeout noodles on the coffee table and she still has her badge from the hospital around her neck. She's breathing softly. His irritation of the past few days vanishes. Seeing her, even asleep, brings him an unfamiliar, overwhelming sense of relief.
When Sakura wakes up the TV is off and the curtains in the living room have been pulled closed. She was sleeping really well, the apartment was quiet and she was warm. She sits up and something slides off her shoulders. She realizes that she is covered with a blanket. It's one of the blankets that she keeps in the closet in the guest room. She pulls it higher over herself and buries her nose in it. It smells like… him. She glances at the door of his bedroom. His shoes are by the front door. She didn't even hear him come home. She realizes what happened and her heart quickens as her fingers tighten around the soft fabric. Why would he do this?... She wraps herself in the blanket and shuffles to her bedroom. She sleeps even better in her bed, surrounded by the soft hint of his scent.
"How was the mission?" she asks in the morning, to try and avoid the awkward silence when they are both in the kitchen for breakfast. She knows better than to mention the blanket.
"It was fine."
"Hinata was worried that Naruto wasn't coming back yesterday."
"We had bad weather."
"She's pregnant, she worries easily."
Sasuke shrugs slightly. "It was a B rank mission, there was no danger. If he had not come back it'd have been because I killed him myself."
She nods. "I think she was worried about that option too."
They exchange a knowing glance and Sakura can't help a smile at the thought of Sasuke being stuck in the middle of nowhere with Naruto and his overflowing enthusiasm. She knows Sasuke enjoys spending time with him no matter how grumpy about it he tries to be. When she looks up she notices that Sasuke has been holding a clementine in his hand, probably to have it for breakfast. It's half peeled and she watches him slowly try to peel the rest of it in his only hand. After a few seconds she extends her hand to take the fruit, quickly peels it, and gives it back to him.
He nods. "Thanks."
She takes another clementine for herself and picks up her bag to leave. "See you tonight," she says before the door closes behind her.
That night Sasuke waits for Sakura but she still isn't back home long after she finished her shift according to the schedule on the fridge. He knows that she probably has other things to do and she is more than strong enough to defend herself at night, but he cannot help but think that something must have happened to her, especially after she explicitly told him that she would see him in the evening. He eventually goes to bed, but when he settles to sleep a noise in the hallway breaks the silence of the night. He thinks Sakura is finally home, but she's usually much more discreet. Is she with the other guy again?... He tries to ignore it but the sounds get closer and he pays more attention. A thump against the wall of the hallway echoes in the living room. He sits up on his futon. Someone is in the hallway in front of the apartment. He checks the time. It's almost two in the morning. He gets up and puts on his sweatpants. Without turning on the light, he silently walks into the living room. The handle of the front door twitches without opening. After a short moment of silence, the handle moves again. He listens carefully. Someone is trying to pick the lock.
His eye is red in the darkness. He glances at his sword against the wall in his bedroom. The lock turns, the door opens, and Sakura stumbles in. His heart sinks. He rushes to catch her and she heavily slumps against him. He holds her up, he tries to see if she's injured, but he quickly understands what is going on. Sakura smells so strongly of alcohol that he flinches. She still has her key in her hand after struggling to put it in the keyhole to unlock the door. She's wearing a short dress and high heels and everything suggests that she had a night out. He is both relieved and concerned that she came home by herself in this state. He tries to judge how drunk she is.
"Sakura?"
She smells like fruit cocktails, sweet and citrusy. Her cheeks are bright pink. Her dress is open low on her back. It takes her a few seconds to react to her name and look at him. She squints.
"Oh no, not you," she mumbles, and he blinks at her reaction.
With a push of the shoulder he closes the door behind her, while trying to keep her on her feet.
"I forgot you were here," she moans.
"What did you do?" he asks, without really expecting an answer.
"Toshi wanted to get drinks…"
The mention of the other man makes Sasuke's chest burn with anger. This guy saw that Sakura was drunk and didn't even walk her back to her door. She lets her purse drop onto the floor and almost loses her fragile balance doing so. He holds her tighter and she rests against his bare chest.
"You smell good," she whispers.
She trips over her own feet a second time. This time he lifts her up to carry her. It's awkward, with one arm, but she wraps her arms around his neck and holds onto him. She is not heavy. Her eyes are half-open, she lets her head rest against his shoulder with a sigh. It feels far more intimate than it should. She puts her hand on his bare chest and lets her fingers wander down his pectoral. His heart races. When he is on missions he faces the darkest threats with the calm and the concentration of an elite soldier, and now his heart is ready to fail him at the touch of a finger. Sakura hums and presses her cheek and her nose into the crook of his neck. He briefly forgets where he is and what he was doing. Her touch makes a million alarms turn on in his brain, except he is in no danger and it's just the two of them, in the dark, in her apartment. He is glad she is too drunk to realize how flustered he is.
He carries her to her bedroom and gently lays her on the mattress. She closes her eyes almost immediately when her head touches the pillow and gives a loud, unrestrained sigh of contentment. He smiles at the sound of it. He hesitates an instant, and takes off her shoes. He pulls the blanket over her and she hums in her sleep. He stays by her side for a few minutes to make sure she's alright. He remembers a time when they were on missions together and she would sleep during his watch. So much has changed since then, it feels like it was another life. When he is sure that she is sound asleep he goes back to his bedroom. He looks at the ceiling for a long time before his heart calms down.
In the morning Sakura's headache makes her flinch at the ray of sunlight that pierces through her blinds. Her tongue feels like cardboard. When she stirs her muscles are sore, and her feet hurt from walking home in heels. As her brain struggles to recall how she came home, her heart sinks. She lifts the comforter to check herself. She is in her bed, still wearing her dress from the night before, but she's barefoot. Her shoes are neatly placed next to the bed. She remembers seeing Sasuke when coming home. She remembers smelling his shower gel when he carried her to her bed. She remembers the feeling of his bare shoulder against her cheek. A hot shiver runs up her spine. She is torn between the mortifying idea that he saw her in this state, and the light pleasant buzz of having felt him so close. She slowly sits up against her pillows. The apartment is silent. She guesses that Sasuke left for work. She rubs her face and checks the time on her alarm clock. There's a glass of water on her nightstand.
It takes Sasuke several days to stop thinking about the feeling of Sakura's body against his when he carried her to bed that night. It made his heart beat too fast for comfort, and yet there was something so thrilling about it that he keeps recalling the memory of it to feel this sensation again. He is now almost sure that he is not coming down with a cold, and that the feeling in his chest when he is around Sakura is a very different kind of disease. A couple of days after that night he finds a peeled mandarin in the fruit bowl when he gets up. He realizes that Sakura must have peeled it for him before leaving for work, and this thought only makes the feeling in his chest worse. Or better.
When he is not home he keeps up with missions. He is glad to have finally graduated to higher ranks of assignments. Not alone yet, he still works with Naruto most of the time, but he finally feels like he is actually working on serious tasks and not doing children's chores, and it usually requires enough focus to keep his mind off things. At least when Naruto is not speaking.
"Soooo Sakura's peeling fruits for you?" Naruto asks with a cheeky smile as soon as they are out of hearing range of the tower guards when they walk out of the village that day.
"How do you know that?" Sasuke asks with a pout.
Naruto exults. "So it's true?"
"Why?"
"Sakura told Ino and Ino told Hinata and Hinata told me!"
This is great. Every little thing he does travels through the village to end up cycling back to him. "... It's not easy to peel things with only one hand."
Naruto's grin is insufferable. "Are there … other things she does for you?" he asks with an eyebrow wiggle.
The image of Sakura feeding him with her chopsticks pops into Sasuke's mind. The feeling of her hands over his skin when she uses medical chakra to heal him. The way she wrote his name on the little medication bottle for his arm.
"No."
"Are you moving out soon?"
"I don't know."
"I don't know how you can live with Sakura. I like her, but sometimes she scares me when she gets mad… Hinata keeps getting mad because of the clothes on the floor but it's not my fault, I can't see them when they get under the bed, but she sees everything with her byakugan… Can you see under the bed with your rinnegan?"
"I don't need my rinnegan to do my laundry."
Living with Sakura is actually very easy. Most of the time she's either out of the apartment or sleeping in her bedroom, and he simply has to make sure that he doesn't wake her up. From time to time they share take-out on the coffee table as a late dinner or they exchange a few words over a cup of tea before leaving for work in the morning. He only almost died twice since he moved in, which cannot be said about all the places he has visited while traveling and is definitely a perk. Sakura is a bit messy and regularly leaves the boxes of her takeout on the table or her things all over the bathroom sink, but it is her apartment after all, and with her hectic schedule of day and night shifts he doesn't judge her too hard.
Sakura is not home when he comes back from the mission three days later and his heart tightens briefly that he doesn't get to see her after being away for several days. He gets ready to go to bed but when he goes to his bedroom he hears the footsteps of two people in the hallway of the building. He hears two voices and he clenches his teeth. He had hoped that he would never see Toshi again. Just thinking about him makes his blood boil. He gets up to get dressed again and hopefully be out of the apartment before he hears anything more. He is ready to leave, but when he walks to the door to put on his shoes, he hears Sakura's voice in the hallway.
"Not tonight," Sakura says as she faces Toshi on the doorstep. She wishes he had gotten the hint earlier and not walked her back home. She had a horrible day at work, it's late, and she needs to be up early in the morning. She can see that he wants to follow her inside, and she is much too exhausted and stressed for that. "I'm tired," she adds, "maybe another time."
Toshi's face becomes a sour frown. "You said we could see each other."
Sakura avoids his gaze as she pulls out her keys to open the door. "I said we could have a drink."
"Really?" he says, and he steps closer to her. "C'mon…"
"No, really," she repeats and steps back to move away from him.
"You can't wear that dress and then refuse to let me take it off…" He sneaks a hand around her waist and she punches him in the stomach hard enough to make him back up.
"Leave me alone!"
He growls. "Ow!" He grabs her by the wrist and yanks. "Come here you little–"
Just when Sakura is about to kick him through the wall and out of the building, the door to her apartment opens wide and they both freeze into place on the doormat, Toshi still holding her wrist.
Sasuke is standing in the doorway. His face is so dark and intense that Sakura flinches. He is looking straight at Toshi. His right eye is bright red. She has not seen him like this in years. When he speaks his voice is slow, but terrifying.
"She said. Not. Tonight."
For a second Sakura fears that Sasuke is going to hit Toshi, but by the time she realizes what is actually going on it's already too late. Toshi is paralyzed, unable to look away from Sasuke's eyes, trapped in his own mind. Sakura pulls her wrist out of Toshi's limp hold and he doesn't move at all.
"Sasuke," Sakura calls.
Sasuke does not react. He keeps staring at Toshi without blinking and Sakura can only imagine what he is showing him.
"Sasuke!" she pleads again.
When he doesn't move, she grabs his arm and shakes him. Her touch distracts him enough to break the genjutsu hold he has on Toshi. Toshi blinks and staggers for a second. When he realizes that he is free, he turns around, trips on his own feet against the wall, and skitters down the hallway like a cockroach. They hear him stumble down the stairs two at a time and silence settles between them.
Sakura needs a few seconds to gather herself once they are alone. Without a word, she walks past Sasuke into her apartment and takes off her shoes. She can still feel Toshi's grip around her wrist and it makes her feel nauseated. She hates everything about what just happened. She hates that Toshi touched her, she hates that Sasuke heard it, she hates that he intervened, and now she hates that he's looking at her like she is a fragile little thing. It's humiliating.
Sasuke watches Sakura pace in the kitchen and rub her wrist nervously.
"... You ok?" he asks when she doesn't look at him even after they have been alone together in the apartment for a moment.
Sakura stops pacing. "You didn't need to do that," she says coldly. "I can take care of myself."
"I know," he says.
"Yeah? You didn't have to scare him like that."
Sasuke blinks. He didn't expect Sakura to defend Toshi. He thought she was mad at Toshi for pressuring her. He thought she would be relieved, glad even, to be rid of him, but she looks upset. "He's fine," he shrugs.
"He's never coming back."
"So what," Sasuke mutters.
Sakura straightens up. "Excuse me?"
Sasuke cannot believe that he has to explain it. "He's an idiot."
"He's nice usually, he was just frustrated–"
"Are you kidding me?" He shakes his head in disbelief. Sakura must still be shaken by what just happened, there is no way she is actually defending Toshi.
"It's none of your business anyway," Sakura says, and she turns around like she is done, but Sasuke is boiling. There is something, deep in his stomach that has been simmering for weeks and now it's too much. He already hated Toshi when he was just the dumb guy Sakura was dating, but now that he has heard his gross insistence and seen him touch Sakura against her will, it took every ounce of willpower he had not to melt the guy's brain out of his skull on the doorstep. He snaps.
"He tried to force you!" he says, much louder than he intended and it makes Sakura face him again.
"And I said no!" she shouts. "I didn't need you!"
"He almost hurt you!"
"He wouldn't have been the first one!"
Sasuke freezes. Sakura's words resonate in the silence between them. Her eyes are so cold they pierce through his chest right to his heart. Not once in the month he has been back had she mentioned the things he had done, and now she's calling him out, out loud, face to face.
He blanks.
"You thought it was forgotten?" she resumes bitterly when he remains quiet.
Sasuke tries to regain his focus but he struggles. "It has nothing to do with him," he says. "He's not–"
"He was there when you weren't."
Sakura is not shouting anymore but her words are still loud in his mind. Why is it so painful to hear? He is not ready to have this conversation.
"We all stayed," Sakura says, and her voice quivers with every word, "we rebuilt, and we carried on but you… You did all these things, and you left again."
"I needed time."
"You think we didn't all need time?"
He had not expected to have to explain himself. Not now, not ever. He doesn't want to talk about it. He is not prepared for that. He hates that Toshi's behavior triggered this conversation. "I'm not… trying to find excuses, I just-"
"You think something could excuse what you did?"
Sakura is shaking. There is a darkness in her eyes, a pain and a resentment that he has never seen before. In the last memories he had of her she was often sad, or hurt, but never angry. Her words remind him of all the things he did and why he did them. He recalls all these events that led him to losing his mind and hurting the people he cared the most about. He tries to push these thoughts away to keep talking but the memories bloom in his mind anyway. He remembers a time, even farther back in his life, when he had to explain to Sakura what it felt like to be an orphan. To explain the ache, the loneliness, the void. And now again, after all these years, she still doesn't understand. She is one of the closest people he knows and yet she couldn't be further from understanding his pain. The frustration is overwhelming.
"You don't know what you're talking about," he says between clenched teeth, "you-"
"Oh yeah? I'm just noisy and annoying, right?"
"You don't know what happened!"
"Explain then! Tell me!"
"You wouldn't understand!"
"Try me!"
Sakura's shouts make dark memories tumble in Sasuke's mind. His anger against her, against Toshi, against himself and the whole world, takes over. When he looks up at her, his eye is bright red.
At first, when the world changes around her, Sakura thinks that Sasuke used his rinnegan to transport her outside of her apartment. She is on the street, in Konoha. The night is cold. The white glow of the moon washes out the colors of the buildings around her. The gravel squeaks under her feet. The air smells like iron.
She tries to look behind herself but she cannot move. What she sees is not her own actions. The scene that happens in front of her eyes is an illusion outside of her control. And yet… Everything seems too real to be a simple genjutsu. She notices the white and red fan on the brick wall next to her and she understands what she is seeing. It's a memory. Sasuke's memory. Through his eyes. She sees what he saw, hears what he heard when he lived this moment. And this feeling, of dread and worry, of fear and confusion in her chest, it's his, like he remembers it.
She tries to release herself from the genjutsu but his hold on her mind is like nothing she has felt before. The memory keeps unfolding in front of her and she is unable to stop it. Someone is in front of her. Someone she has only ever seen in pictures. In the bingo book.
Before she can think the memory changes. She is in a house. His house. His parents are in front of her, on their knees. Two red eyes shine in the shadow behind them. Sakura understands with horror what is going to happen but she cannot look away. Itachi's blade reflects the moonlight when it comes down twice and his parents collapse onto the floor. Feelings crash over Sasuke like an ocean wave. So much love and so much terror at once, it makes her heart hurt. The sky turns red. She sees them die again. She hears it again, smells it again, feels the chill on her skin again. The same fear and the same pain again. And again, and again and the scene keeps repeating again each time more real and each time more terrifying as she knows what is going to happen but she cannot stop it. She is forced to watch and she has never wanted anything to stop more than she does now. The feelings Sasuke has kept of this memory are unbearable. The feelings of a kid, a love so pure and a betrayal so deep, they burst through her mind and tear her apart. She wants to scream. The sounds and the smells of the scene make her want to vomit. Her muscles are so taut it's painful. Her head feels like it will explode if she watches the scene one more time. Every time it repeats it gets worse and yet it keeps going. She'd kill herself to make it stop if she could move.
When it suddenly stops her brain doesn't respond anymore. Her mind is blank. There is nothing but the white void and the numbness that Sasuke felt for weeks after the death of his parents. His memories are blurry. Images of rows of tombstones. Of empty houses. Of silent streets. Adult voices that he hears from far away through ringing ears and that echo in his head.
"What do we do about the kid?"
"You can't stay in this house anymore."
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"You need to go back to school."
"... Do you understand, Sasuke?"
She sees herself as a little girl. As he saw her that night he left the village. She feels how tempted he was to stay, and how hard it was to keep walking away.
The memory changes again. Sakura sees Sasuke's brother again. The sight of him wakes up anger in Sasuke's chest, so much anger it feels like her heart won't take it. So overwhelming that it spreads through her whole body like poison and burns from the inside. It's so strong she cannot think properly anymore. But also so much sadness, so much love that makes the betrayal so raw, it's like a hole through her heart. It floods her chest and it feels like she is drowning. It's painful in her ribs, in her throat, she can barely breathe.
She wishes she could pass out and not have to see any more of it, but she sees him, Itachi, in front of her again. She's outside. The air smells like dust and ashes. He extends a bloody hand toward her and she feels his fingers on Sasuke's forehead, and then slipping down his face until he collapses to the ground. Is he dead? She feels nothing anymore. How horrible it is, to be this empty.
Sasuke's memories mix and the voices layer over each other.
"Preventing the coup."
"Killing the Uchiha."
"A traitor."
"For your sake, Sasuke."
Through all these scenes, these voices, these places, these feelings in her throat, Sakura understands. She understands like Sasuke understood when he saw his brother's memories and realized what Itachi had done. She feels how his heart got crushed when it all fell apart. The lies. The sacrifice. The emptiness left by his parents and his brother, that feels like an open wound that doesn't heal. And the loneliness, the regrets, that are so heavy to bear every day. It's too much. It melts into a black and red fog in her mind.
Standing in Sakura's apartment, Sasuke regrets his action the very moment it's done. For a second he let his anger take over and he let Sakura see what he had never told anyone. For a second he wished so much that she would understand, he felt so hurt, so tired that no one could imagine what he lives with, so frustrated not to have the right words to explain it, that he showed her.
In front of him Sakura is motionless. She is stunned with her eyes open and her mouth gaping. Her eyes are glassy, blind to reality, looking into the void as she is stuck in her own mind by the genjutsu. It lasts a second but he knows how time stretches in her mind.
"Sakura?" he asks.
Her lips tremble but no sound comes out.
"Sakura?"
She blinks. Her eyes look around and try to focus. She looks at him.
Sakura's brain struggles to come back to reality. The images he forced her to watch blend together with the things she sees in front of her and she cannot tell what is real and what is an illusion. Her head hurts horribly. She looks at the floor and sees crimson splatters again. Her stomach turns. In front of her Sasuke moves, and she takes a shaky step back. She needs to stay away from him. She stumbles towards her bedroom. She still smells it, the blood, the fear, the dust of the gravel on the street, the cold air of that night. Her chest feels sore after hurting so badly. She needs to lie down. Her whole body is shaking so violently that her knees buckle before she reaches the bed. She manages to sit on the floor, leaning against the bed frame. Her breath hitches. She hides her face with trembling fingers. When she closes her eyes the images come up again. Every time she blinks her world turns red. She tries to breathe but the iron smell is still in the air and it's suffocating.
"Sakura?"
Sasuke is standing in the doorway of the bedroom. His eye is still bright red and it reminds her of the man in his memory. Looking at him, it's like seeing these scenes again, like she is still in the genjutsu. Doubt creeps over her. She might still be under his influence. She doesn't know what is real anymore. He takes a step toward her into the bedroom. How can she trust him? How can she be sure it's not still a genjutsu? She tries to dismiss it. She cannot focus. Panic makes her eyes water. He takes another step into the room and she presses herself back against the bed.
"Go away!" she cries.
"Sakura-"
"Leave me alone!"
"I can't leave you like this…"
"Get out," she sobs.
She holds her knees up against her chest and hides behind her arms.
"Sakura…"
"Go away."
"I'm sorry."
She doesn't reply. Her tears burn her eyes when she holds his gaze until his shoulders drop and he takes a step back. She watches him slowly give up and turn around to leave the room. She doesn't breathe until she hears the front door close behind him.
Sakura stays motionless in the silence of the room for long minutes before she trusts herself to believe that she's not hallucinating anymore. She pulls herself up onto the bed and crawls under her comforter. She feels cold and empty inside. Her brain is numb. Her eyelids are puffy and her tears dry on her cheeks. The things she told him echo in her mind and guilt blooms in her heart. She had never imagined he lived with this.
The massacre of his family had always been a mysterious event for her. She was almost too young when it happened to remember it. She only recalls adults talking about it. At that time it was impossible to conceive that a whole clan had died overnight, at the hand of a single person who used to be one of them. The village had quickly muffled the rumors, had remained vague about the circumstances, and arranged very private and perfunctory funerals. Sasuke had been missing from school for several weeks before coming back.
Sakura had always thought that he had not seen any of it. That he had somehow come back to his house one day and the bodies had already been taken away and the officials had told him that his parents were dead. That's what she thought had happened, and it was already enough to traumatize someone. Now that she saw it, she understands how it had made him lose his mind. What hurts the most, however, is how vibrant the memories still were. How still strong these feelings were in his mind and his heart, fifteen years later.
When her alarm rings in the morning, she has not closed her eyes for a second.