the flower that blooms in adversity

He doesn’t know her name, but he’s seen her around the village. He’s heard other Alphas talk about her: the pink haired Omega, the civilian nurse at the hospital, the medicinal herbs specialist that makes expensive and effective salves for shinobi.

She sat with him once, at the hospital, and applied a lotion directly to his bicep, but it happened even before she touched him.

It happened the second she entered his hospital room, the second he inhaled and smelled her sweet scent, a mix of his favorite tea leaves that he’s tried to brew since and haven’t smelled as pure and lovely, sweet jasmine, and the smell of honeysuckle, a flower he’d like to place between his lips and inhale like her sweet scent.

Sasuke feels woozy when he inhales, and desperate when he exhales. He remembers this feeling from when she touched him, but her delicious scent is disorienting enough.

What is she doing here in the Hokage’s office?

“Watch your tone, Uchiha,” Tsunade warns.

Oh, he must have said that out loud. He has the decency to look sheepish. “Sorry, Hokage-sama. I meant, is this about a mission?”

Tsunade’s eyes narrow, but she licks her lips and moves forward. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see a pretty flush on Sakura’s cheeks. Has he embarrassed her? Or worse, hurt her feelings by his comment? He hadn’t meant to be rude, but the way her scent invaded his senses left him incapable of proper speech.

“Yes, this is about a mission.” Tsunade shifts in her seat behind her desk, a frown on her face. For someone who acts like an Alpha, you can tell easily from her scent, or lack thereof, that she’s a beta. A strong, powerful beta that could easily send him flying through the wall behind him if she decided to. “It’s an escort mission to the Land of Lightning—you’re familiar with the route, aren’t you?”

Sasuke nods his head.

“Our medicinal herbs specialist needs to cultivate a specific plant that grows near the far North,” Tsunade explains. “Unfortunately, she can’t go alone. It will be at least a seven day trip on foot if you walk, and take the safest route… And even then, you’ll still be sleeping in the woods most nights.”

“So I’m to escort… her,” he says, gesturing toward the girl, whose name he doesn’t even know yet, but whose scent he’s figmented in dreams, “to the Land of Lightning.”

“Sakura Haruno,” Tsunade supplies.

Her name fits her hair, he thinks, a sheet of vibrant pink that cascades down her back that matches the color of cherry blossoms, all the way to her narrow waist. She takes care of her hair—she can afford to; she is not a ninja, she is a civilian doctor who happens to understand the intricacies of herbal medicine, and healing. It’s beautiful, more beautiful than any woman’s hair he’s ever seen, but he wants to push it behind her ears so he can see her gland on the side of her neck.

Sasuke almost shakes his head before looking back at the Hokage. “When do we leave?”

“Go home, get some rest,” Tsunade offers. “You can both leave first thing in the morning. There’s no rush to get there, the plants have nowhere to go, and there’s no rush to get back… Remember that Sakura isn’t a ninja like you, Sasuke,” she reminds him. “She needs to rest. I’ll give you three weeks to complete the mission, give or take.”

“Understood.”

“And, one more thing…” Tsunade’s lips curl into a sly smirk. “Walk Sakura home. It’s getting late.”

Sasuke nods, decidedly ignoring her smirk as he tries to keep his eyes from narrowing. “Yes, Hokage-sama.”

Sasuke opens the door, and waits a moment for Sakura. When she doesn’t take the hint that he’s holding the door for her, he clears his throat and then says, “Haruno-san, are you coming?”

She seems to shake herself out of something, turning a pretty pink color that matches her hair, and he wonders how far that flush goes down past the modest collar of her dress, lovely civilian clothes that define her waist and a long skirt that flares out at the hips. It’s a pretty green that matches her eyes, sparkling emeralds that make contact with his shyly. “Sorry, Uchiha-san—”

“Sasuke is fine,” he supplies quickly. He’d rather move past formalities now, and he’d like to hear her say his name, too.

She smiles demurely. “Okay, Sasuke. You can call me Sakura, then.”

Sakura moves past him through the doorway, and Sasuke is close enough that her scent nearly floors him. He inhales deeply. She smells delectable, too good, how is he ever going to survive this mission?

“Thank you,” she says, turning around to meet his gaze, but when she sees him: pupils dilated, nostrils flared, eyes staring down at her, scent spiking and agitated, her mouth falls open and her eyes widen. She stammers, “is—is everything alright, Sasuke?”

He shakes his head, and tries to hold his breath, closing the door behind him as Sakura backs away. When her back hits the wall, he doesn’t take another step forward, leaving enough space between them so that Sakura can breathe. Sasuke takes a deep breath, and there’s enough space between them that he gets a little oxygen and everything is a little less fuzzy. He relaxes, if only a little, and he’s able to start breathing regularly. “Everything is fine. Where do you live, Sakura?”

When Sakura smells him relax, she relaxes, too. “I… I live a few blocks away from the hospital, in the apartments past the market, but you don’t have to walk me home, Sasuke. I’ll be fine. The Uchiha District is on the other side of town—”

“It’s fine.” He starts walking down the hall, out of the Hokage tower. She follows him. “I insist.”

“Well, thank you, Sasuke-kun.” She smiles, and what a pretty smile she has, lips plush and soft-looking. They’re painted pink today, but last time he saw her they were red, and he decides that he likes both. “I appreciate it.”

They walk in a comfortable silence down the city streets. It’s late now, and Konoha becomes quiet when the sun goes down. It’s summer, and the civilian kids are off from school, usually dancing through the streets with their friends, but they’re home now. It seems like it’s just the two of them on the street. The hospital looks dead as they pass it, and Sakura stops. “Do you mind if I grab something from my office, Sasuke-kun?”

He shakes his head. “Not at all. Lead the way.”

She smiles at him, again, and it makes his heart flutter, a little. Just enough that he’s sure his scent might have spiked slightly, embarrassingly. He follows her into the hospital, to the elevator where Sakura idles, but then says, “maybe we should take the stairs.”

Relieved, Sasuke agrees. He couldn’t imagine standing in an elevator with her, her scent overtaking his scenes and leaving him breathless and nearly confused. He’s afraid he might say something he regrets, not that he’d ever touch her, but he’s sure something stupid might come out of his mouth if he’s left alone in an enclosed area with her. He nearly fell to his knees when she passed under his nose while she walked by him; standing in an elevator couldn’t be good for his health.

They walk up two flights, and he follows her down the hallway to her office. She stops in front of a large wood door with her name on it, reaches into the pocket of her skirt and pulls out a set of keys, unlocking the door. “I’ll just be a moment. You can come in, have a seat…” she trails off, stepping into her office and immediately scurrying over to the bookshelf and trailing her fingers over the spines of textbooks.

Sasuke takes a step into her office, and is immediately overwhelmed. Everything, absolutely everything, in the entire office smells like her.

It smells like she lives here.

Sasuke takes a step out of the office, holding his breath. “I’ll be right outside, Sakura.”

“Sure,” she says, unfazed, and continues scavenging through her books. Sasuke takes a few more steps away from the office, back into the sterile hallways of the hospital, nostrils filling with the nearly stinging and acrid smell of antiseptic. It’s better, less dizzying and more orienting.

When she’s done, she locks the door behind her. She’s carrying three textbooks, and heavy ones by the looks of it. They look bigger than her. Sasuke immediately grabs them from her, his hand grazing hers, his finger touching the gland on her wrist mistakenly. They both gasp, and the books clatter to the ground.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Sasuke says, and immediately bends to the floor and begins picking up her books. He did not mean to touch her gland, but he’d be lying if he said it didn’t feel glorious, that soft, sweet patch of skin on her wrist that would smell like her scent bottled, almost as delicious as the one on her neck. He could scent her here, make her smell like him until everybody thinks she’s his.

He doesn’t do that. He picks up her books, and begins stalking off maybe a little too fast toward the stairwell. She trails after him, trying to catch up, before she says, “Sasuke-kun, wait!”

He slows down until he’s walking at her pace again. “Uh, sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she says. “You must be in such a rush to get home. Were you just coming back from a mission?”

“No,” he says. “Just training with my team.”

“You’re on the same team as Naruto-san, right?” Sakura asks.

“Yes.” Sasuke nods his head. “Do you know him?”

“I’ve treated Naruto-san… many, many times,” she says between laughs. Sasuke smirks, knowing exactly what she’s talking about: Naruto is a klutz, and often ends up in the hospital in need of healing because of it. “He is very kind.”

Sasuke snorts. “He’s something.”

When they make it to Sakura’s apartment, Sakura stops and turns to Sasuke with a smile. “This is it.”

“Can I drop off your text books for you?” he asks quietly, and then shakes his head. “Only if you’re comfortable, obviously, and—”

“Sure, Sasuke-kun,” she says and her smile only widens. “Thank you.”

Sasuke follows behind her up the stairs that leads to her apartment door. She unlocks it quietly, and then let’s Sasuke in behind her. If her office smelled incredible, then her home smells unreal. It smells like laying in a field of flowers, lush and bright, like opening up a used book at the library, crisp and somehow fresh. It smells like Sakura rolling onto him in the morning, her hair over her shoulder, neck exposed to his sharp teeth, tongue grazing her gland as he tastes her scent with his tongue.

“You can put those on the kitchen table,” she says. She’s smiling at him, and he’s suffocating. He could actually die, maybe.

Sasuke quickly places the books down on the table, and then makes a sprint for the door. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he says, before locking the door behind him, and shutting it swiftly. He takes a big lungful of the air around him, and sprints home.

…

The Uchiha District is always full of life, cursed with the hustle and bustle of every mundane village. The Uchiha’s settled on the outskirts of Konoha, not quite part of the village and not quite one of its own. It’s over 20 acres large, and lined with vendors, homes, businesses, and the entire police force of Konoha.

Sasuke calls it home.

When he enters the gates, he slows his pace to moseying. He greets his Aunt and Uncle who own the candy stand at the entrance, cleaning up for the day as they offer him sweets he kindly declines. He isn’t one for candies, and he isn’t one to take something he won’t use. He greets his nieces and nephews as they are running back to their home as the sun sets. When he finally makes it to his own, small home, he unlocks his door and pads through with a sigh.

Sasuke strips to his boxers, and begins to make a dinner of eggs, rice, and tomatoes, something simple that he can handle after a long mission. If he’d had the energy, he’d have walked the extra mile into the district to his parent’s house and joined them for dinner, but he couldn’t bear to walk much further.

Once he’s full and settled, Sasuke walks into his bedroom and sighs when he sees his messy bed and his laundry on the floor that he hasn’t tended to in a while due to missions. He gathers his soiled clothes, throws them in the hamper, and gathers clean linens from the closet. He makes his bed, gathers his lightest quilt against the summer warmth, and decides to check in early for the night.

He’s exhausted, but sleep evades him. He stares up at the ceiling, hands laced behind his head, as he thinks. His mind is crawling with thoughts of Sakura: Sakura, in her emerald green dress, blushing in embarrassment as he holds the door for her. Sakura, brushing her hair out of her face and over her shoulder, innocently showing off the plush gland on her neck. Sakura, in her office, her scent surrounding them like a warm, soft blanket, cocooning him like it’s her own arms wrapped around him.

Then, he closes his eyes, and his thoughts change. Sakura, sliding her emerald dress down her arms, showing off her bony shoulders. Sakura, tilting her head slightly, baring her ripe gland to him like an offering. Sakura, in her office, on her desk in lordosis, baring her pussy to him, wet with slick, ready for his knot.

This isn’t the first time he’s fantasized about Sakura. It’s not the second, or third time since she helped him in the hospital after that mission a few months ago.

It’s not the first time he’s touched himself thinking about her, and he’s sure it won’t be the last.

Sasuke throws the cover off of himself, unearths his cock from his underwear, and strokes himself mercilessly to the thought of Sakura in his bed, now, on her back, legs open wide so he can get a good look at her dripping cunt. It would be perfect, and pink, and it would strangle and milk him for all he’s worth.

He’s almost there, and then he thinks about her asking him—no, begging him to mate her, and he falls over the edge, finishing in viscous globs of white on his stomach, and into the curly, black hair at the base of his cock.

After a moment Sasuke sighs, and throws his clean arm over his eyes. It takes him a moment to get up, and he curses when he realizes he’ll be going to sleep much later than anticipated now that he needs a shower.

Sasuke rises from his bed, strips, leaving his soiled boxers on the ground by his bed, and walks toward the bathroom where he’ll take a long, cold shower and try to think about things other than pink haired omegas that smell so beautiful and divine that there aren’t enough suppressants in the world to stave off the scent.