#ssbpday2

It seems like everyone found out about her shinobi deregistration to join Sasuke’s travels overnight. Sakura should have expected this; after all, both Naruto and Ino saw her deliver the necessary paperwork directly to Kakashi. While she’s not quite sure what Naruto did with the information, Sakura received an earful from everyone: her parents, her patients, even some of her friends…

🌟 SasuSaku Blank Period Week 2023 DAY 2🌟

Here are today's prompts! Don't forget to use the proper hashtags for today!

#SSBlankPeriod2023 #SSBPDay2

My SasuSaku Blank Period Week contribution for the prompt : I want to grow old with you.

I’m sorry for the mistakes, English is not my mother tongue. I hope you like it.

Summary : As Sasuke watched Sakura sleep so peacefully, he could not help thinking that he wanted to spend the rest of his life like this.

Disclaimer : Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

@sasusakublankperiodweek

AO3 / FF.NET

Sasuke looked at Sakura who was sleeping soundly in his arms. The day had been tiring for her, she had used almost all her chakra.

They had arrived in a village that no longer had a medic and Sakura had immediately started work. Sasuke had already seen her heal several people during their journey. She had also healed him several times. But it was the first time he had seen her work like this. She had managed to create a small improvised hospital where everyone could help. She had impressed him.

As he watched her sleep so peacefully, Sasuke could not help thinking that he wanted to spend the rest of his life like this. Whether they keep traveling or stay in Konoha. The most important thing was that they were together. He could imagine the next few years with her. Their marriage, their children. He had been thinking about it for some time. He wanted to ask her to marry him. He wanted to do things right and make this moment unforgettable.

‘I want to grow old by with you,’ he whispered.

Sakura moved slightly, as if she heard him, but she did not wake up. Sasuke smiled and hugged her tightly. Soon he would propose to her. Soon, Sakura will be Sakura Uchiha.

✨🌸🍅Day Two: Cooking "I didn't know you have that habit"🍅🌸✨

Sakura hummed a tune softly as she scooped a dollop of sticky rice from a ceramic bowl. Her humming got a little louder when the favourite part of the song followed as she started moulding the rice in her hands. For a moment, she paused to decide which of the fillings she would put now — umeboshi for her or tomatoes for Sasuke. She counted the onigiris on the plate that she had already made. She decided on the sliced tomatoes and shaped the rice ball in a perfect triangle shape. 

The feeling of Sasuke sitting right behind her on the dining table was still new to her. Imagining Sasuke’s eyes on her back was enough to make her heart flutter. Her younger self would definitely have danced in victory at the very thought, but this Haruno Sakura wouldn’t. She blushed at the thought as she picked a neatly cut piece of nori seaweed and wrapped it around the base of the onigiri. She felt a little embarrassed when she realized Sasuke sitting behind her also meant he’d been listening to her off-tune humming. 

Sakura cleared her throat to shake off her embarrassment as she sprinkled some sesame seeds on the onigiri. Satisfied with her hard work, she was proud to give each of her onigiris a perfect triangle shape. Maybe mother would be proud of me now, she boasted herself as she giggled.

Then again, she realized that she wasn’t living alone anymore. Sasuke had been spending most of his time at her home in between his missions. Sakura had been trying her best to cover up her weird habits around Sasuke. Although she cared less about impressing Sasuke now, she had to admit that a childish part still wanted his approval. 

She turned her head carefully to peek at Sasuke, secretly hoping that their eyes would meet for a fraction of a second before Sasuke would avert his eyes. The idea of embarrassing Sasuke tempted her until she realized Sasuke had been dozing. 

Unsure whether she was thankful that Sasuke hadn’t heard her singing, or disappointed to find he hadn’t been staring, she called Sasuke, waking him up.

“Lunch is ready,” Sakura announced as she placed two bowls of miso soup on the table. 

 It had become a frequent routine to cook and share a meal together, unless Naruto dragged Sasuke or both of them for ramen. 

Sasuke nodded and got up to help her set the dishes. Sakura brought the other food one plate at a time. It was not the first time Sakura had cooked something for him, but she was excited today. She placed the tomato filled onigiris on his plate before Sasuke could pick one. She had made sure to pick up the best tomatoes available at the grocery store when she returned yesterday from her work. 

“Itadakimasu,” they both said in unison before the silence fell between them.

Sakura didn’t miss the subtle pleasure in Sasuke’s face when he tasted the tomatoes inside his onigiris. Sakura sipped her soup to suppress the grin forming on her lips. With a satisfied sigh, she picked up her onigiri and took a bite.

Sasuke couldn't help but notice she kept her left hand cupped under the onigiri she was eating to catch the falling morsels.

Sasuke had noticed this first in their genin days but had never mentioned it to her. During his childhood, his mother had nagged him about perfect table manners, he remembered, and he had always tried to abide by them. He had always disliked Naruto's non-stop talking while eating. He could still ignore Naruto, but he couldn’t tolerate Sakura's habit of using a hand to catch falling food.

"My mother always said that's a bad habit," Sasuke spoke straightly.

Sakura stuffed her mouth, unsure of what he meant, her left hand involuntarily moving.

When Sasuke eyed her left hand, Sakura understood what he was implying.

"Sorry." Sakura smiled sheepishly, her face flushing instantly.

Shannaroo, I messed up! 

Sakura used all her will not to move her left hand as she gobbled the last bite of onigiri.

"I didn't know you had that habit," Sasuke said again, this time his tone was a little softer.

Her younger self would have been too busy sulking at Sasuke’s criticism that she wouldn’t have noticed Sasuke’s change in voice. 

“My mother did as well,” Sasuke said with a sad smile on his face.  

Although she wasn’t sure about which habit he was talking about, a warm feeling rose in her chest. She didn’t know much about his mother, but she hoped Sasuke would eventually tell her more about his family.

For now, she looked towards him with a soft gaze, hoping Sasuke might continue.

“Mother often sang when she cooked,” Sasuke said.

Sakura’s gaze grew softer. Soon her green eyes were met by Sasuke’s onyx, just like she had wanted some moments ago. She was at a loss of words and could only manage to ask, “So you listened? I thought you didn’t.” 

“Aah,” Sasuke chuckled. Sakura wasn’t like his mother by any means, but they did ‌share a trivial habit. A small happiness crept inside him to acknowledge that old memories did not always bring back pain. Sometimes they promised relief too.

Day 2 Prompt:  Cooking // “I didn’t know you had that habit.”

@sasusakublankperiodweek

Ao3 | FFN | ↓

“You miss him — don’t deny it! You’re a softhearted man.”

“I plead the fifth.”

Quiet laughing, shared only in a small clearing at the edge of the world, filthier than they like but close to the salt and earth and sea, nothing in between them but love and a basket of peeled fruit.

The first time she does it, Sasuke is quite sure he’s succumbing to blindness, or at least some degradation of sight. Must have been a trick of the light.

The second time she does it prompts a double-take.

On the third time he looms up behind her as she crouches near the fruit basket, and can’t help the incredulous sigh that escapes him, which startles her; in hindsight, his approach was a poor choice of abrupt entrance into her space, considering she’s been putting a sharp object so close to her lips.

Discarded rinds flutter to the forest floor as well — as butterflies, as kaleidoscopic confetti littering the ground beneath them from her produce peeling.

“Sasuke-kun!” The knife falls to the dirt with a keen metal pitch. “Don’t scare me like that!”

“What are you doing, Sakura?”

“You said your vision was fine,” she says with a pout. “Making dinner, obviously.”

“And . . . have you always done that?”

“Done what?”

A rustle and sigh, not wanting to give form and shape to the action. Plucking up the knife now spattered with dry soil, she gently cleans it against the material of her thigh and settles into her haunches properly, seeming puzzled. Flame of the small makeshift pit of fire popping merrily, a boiling stone pot waiting to be fed previously-peeled vegetables. Between her thumb and forefinger she dangles the knife absentmindedly.

Maybe it’s a silly worry — maybe he’s just hungry. Brow furrowing, he decides to tell the truth in his sometimes brusque way.

“Just be careful with that. And anyway, where’d you pick that up? Seems like something our teammate might do.”

When her eyes flash for a moment, bright in the fading daylight, he considers that so far out from the main road, no one could hear him scream. Ah, stupid response.

She rolls those elegant green eyes in a long, mocking arc, and blows a strand of long pink hair out of her face. Both of them are a bit scruffy, a long way from an inn or even a village, off the grid for a while after encounters with persistent bandits. Possessing renowned abilities and not exactly strangers to the world after being honored post-war, they concluded they may have overdone it in their retaliation.

And, propping up the bodies afterward near a visible post near the road (gently, of course, and with all limbs intact!), they decided to travel light and low the following weeks.

They’ve watched each other transform into slightly more feral versions of one another. It’s not unwelcome, the smudges on her face and the ragged edges of her hair beginning to reach her waist. He wonders what he must look like to her; brutish, perhaps, although by the way they’re so close at night, perhaps not.

She’s not exactly the same girl he left behind.

“Is poisoning the way you wanted to go, darling?”

Sasuke blanches. “Sakura?”

Flipping the knife and catching it again, she aims the point at him. “Do not compare me to Naruto, or there will be a tragic accident here indeed.”

He’s done this before, stumbled into a flippant comment that he doesn’t expect to get her going. Well, he’s learning.

“In fact, don’t compare any woman to Naruto,” she adds, wrinkling her nose. “Not if you prefer living.”

Sasuke tamps down a snort that could be laughter. He doesn’t usually stop her rants — they’re sort of endearing.

“Listen, I know you were wandering around the world with your own . . . aims,” she says, waving the knife around again, “but I did an absurd lineup of missions while you were gone:  reconnaissance, medical dispatch, undercover — yes, I did, I see that smirk of yours, and don’t you know women tend to have much, much higher completion rates than the men on those?”

Yes, Sasuke knows all these things, but getting her heated, sometimes, is a joy and entertainment in itself that he’s at least been smart enough not to admit. Assumes she’ll discover it eventually, the way he quiets down in the face of her temper, the shameless way he’s realized he watches her eyes and lips and an angry rouge simmer up through the skin of cheeks and chest.

“Not to mention I’m usually the only kunoichi on those missions, or at the very least outnumbered; do you know what it’s like to bunk with a whole damn bunch of you? Gods!”

Jabbing the knifepoint in the basket next to her laden with a colorful bouquet of chopped produce, it comes up with a piece of apple, which she points at him in a vaguely threatening manner.

The sight of this particular fruit sends a strange pang throughout, plucking at a string in his heart in the vein of a vibrating and resonating harp.

“And if you’re worried about me hurting myself,” she says with a sharp tongue cluck, “I’ll have you know — but you should already know! — that I’ve performed countless surgeries, sewed up hundreds of bodies, been horribly poisoned, pinned like a cushion, and sure maybe I have picked up a gross habit or two from Naruto, but you know what being around him is like, he rubs off on everyone, and the point is,” and now she takes an angry bite of the apple chunk that’s still speared through with the knife, chewing angrily, and waves the uneaten half at him some more, “I am perfectly capable of using knives, and at total and complete liberty to lick the knife when I’m done! It isn’t the worst thing you can put in your mouth anyway. You’re one to talk:  You put all sorts of inanimate things in your mouth, even when I offer to help you, you were bandaging wounds with your teeth for gods’ sake!”

Just about spent, she seems to burn even brighter in the dusk. Sasuke thinks of fruit on hospital floors, the earth splitting beneath his feet:  She is at once something gentle, something fierce.

When she tosses the knife back into the fruit basket and the spearing of a cleaved, unlucky fruit chunk sounds between them, Sasuke’s too slow to hide his smirk and knows he’s been found out.

“You think this is funny! Oh-ho, you think it’s hilarious when I’m mad, don’t you? When I defend myself?”

Sasuke shakes his head, lackadaisical. Settled in and sated like a large jungle cat. “I didn’t want you cutting yourself. That’s all.”

“Could’ve saved me the rant, then,” she mutters. Her stomach growls louder than she anticipates, and she presses her hands to her face and groans. “So embarrassing! I’m hungry, dirty, fucking vagabond vogue and you just sit there and you look so, ugh, self-satisfied.”

Sighing, she tumbles back into a sitting position and cards a hand through her long hair.

“I shouldn’t have compared you to Naruto,” he offers, still fighting a smirk. “It wasn’t what I meant in the slightest.” He pauses. “I . .  like you this way.”

“Oh, what way?”

“ . . . scrappy?”

“You mean filthy?”

“Strong?”

“Should’ve known that by now.”

“Indeed.”

“Bandits? A lil’ thing called the Fourth Shinobi War? Naruto’s ribs?”

“Ah, now who’s bringing up the idiot?”

“You miss him — don’t deny it! You’re a softhearted man.”

“I plead the fifth.”

Quiet laughing, shared only in a small clearing at the edge of the world, filthier than they like but close to the salt and earth and sea, nothing in between them but love and a basket of peeled fruit.

“Perhaps . . . I did speak out of turn.”

Sakura leans back on hands, tosses her head to the sky to beam at the budding evening stars.

“I do appreciate it, though. You caring, I mean,” she adds. “But I promise I know my way around sharp objects.”

Something slips from his lips in undertone, a quiet remark that draws her mischievous green gaze.

“That too,” she says. She tosses her long, wild hair over her shoulder and meets his eyes head-on.

Staring back and channeling the same crackling heat as the fire a few feet away.