Hey, it's still almost like Christmas, right?
Pairing(+1): NaruSasuSaku
Warnings: ...Actually, none. This is pretty tame. I must be losing my touch.
Author's Notes: So normally, angst is not a problem for me. For some reason, this seemed to stray out of that. Hopefully it will still satisfy.
Awkward didn’t begin to describe it; that quick mashing of lips, stupid looks, fumbling hands, all the ridiculous makings of a ridiculous kiss. A kiss shared with a friend, maybe a best friend, and a rival. A kiss with someone who Naruto kind of thinks of when he wonders what it would have been like to have a brother, and doesn’t that just make this whole sloppy mess that much more screwed up?
Not the kiss in class. That didn’t count. Even at twelve, they knew that didn’t count. No, the kiss after Sarutobi died, after they walked Sakura home and drifted off, neither of them with anywhere to go or anyone else to go to.
With rain coming and going, hiding from the latest shower under the awning of a closed toy shop, with wind-up monkeys staring at them through the windows; that kiss.
They didn’t mention it the next day, or the day after. In the end, they didn’t get the chance to mention it, and Naruto wasn’t sure they would have, but the fact that they never dealt with it bugs him sometimes, like running his tongue over a broken tooth, and he stops and wonders about it, especially when it rains.
_
Sakura never thought that her first time would be a pity-fuck. There Naruto was, looking so hurt, and she knew how he felt so well, she couldn’t quite say no. What if he left when she did? What was she supposed to do then? Go to Sai for comfort? No.
Naruto was warm, and surprisingly gentle, and he didn’t have a clue what he was doing. He fussed, asking if she was okay at the wrong moments, so she wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh at him or cry just a little because couldn’t he have asked that like fifteen seconds ago, before he made her wince.
In the end, maybe it didn’t even count. She didn’t come. At least, she didn’t think she did. He didn’t either. He fell out first, and he blushed brightly, and stammered an apology, and neither of them could quite work up the nerve to try again. It was almost not like Naruto, almost, to let himself fail like that, but then they were both embarrassed by then, and it was stupid. She didn’t really mind being so close to him for a couple of minutes in there, a little bit of time between getting it in and working out how to move, and getting over the initial sting, and when Naruto started speeding up and slipped out entirely. So maybe it would do, in the end, for a first time.
Maybe she’d know better when she figured out just who it was she felt sorry for.
_
Lying in bed, listening to the sounds of the hospital blip and burble: Sasuke was alive. He also couldn’t see. There was something over his eyes. He raised one heavy hand and ran it over his face. Gauze. More hospital things. He tried to raise the other hand and felt a tug. IV.
It all sunk in slowly. He drew a deep breath and sighed it out slowly.
He was alive, and that was vaguely surprising. His last memories weren’t so perfectly clear, but he remembered not expecting to open his eyes again. He remembered Naruto. Naruto yelling and growling and demanding in that very Naruto-like way that he live just a little longer, and he remembered thinking that maybe Naruto was better at him than that as darkness dragged him down and down.
Carefully, Sasuke felt the bandage again.
“They should be fine,” Sakura’s voice broke through the tinny medical sounds. Sasuke tensed, briefly, surprised. She must have been there the whole time, and she must have been still.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. He let his hand fall back to the bed to match words to actions.
She was silent for so long after that, Sasuke wondered if she’d left before she actually spoke again. In the time between, he didn’t move, didn’t let himself wonder about her or Kakashi or Naruto, didn’t even let himself think.
Finally, softly, she said, “I’d still make your life as happy as I can, if you’ll let me.”
His life. It occurred to him in a slow, tentative sort of way that it actually was his now, maybe. It wasn’t Itachi’s. It had been Itachi’s for so very long, he suddenly couldn’t remember what he thought he might do with it on his own.
She sat with him while he cried.
_
Naruto smiled for Sakura and Sasuke’s sake. They deserved it. They deserved all the smiles he could give them. And if he was careful to keep his eyes narrowed, maybe they wouldn’t see that he was jealous. He hoped not, because the last thing either of them needed was his hurt feelings, right? It wasn’t like they were really trying to leave him out of anything. It was just... now they had something he didn’t get to be part of.
He was still their friend, and he didn’t want for a minute anything that might make him lose that. He wanted them to be happy, so he was there at the small ceremony, smiling, standing beside them. He even signed his name on their papers. He wanted almost nothing more than for them to be happy. He just wished that he could be happy too.
_
Sakura couldn’t seem to get used to sleeping with Sasuke. Not the sex part-she was pretty okay with the sex part. It wasn’t exactly fun, spontaneous romance, but it was mutual and it felt good, and they were figuring themselves out in that respect pretty well.
It was the real, actual sleeping part that was hard. She didn’t have a lot of experience sharing beds with people. At first, she thought that was the problem. She just wasn’t used to sleeping with someone else in her space, figuring out how to arrange limbs, and worrying about keeping other people awake with tossing and turning. Yet, weeks turned into a month, and then two, and she still couldn’t really get comfortable sleeping with him.
He didn’t hold her. She sort of thought he would. She might have hoped. And she might have hoped he would let her hold him, but when she tried-face tucked against his shoulder, arms around him, body presses against his back-he never relaxed, not all night, so she after a while she just stopped trying. They slept back to back, and Sakura slept badly.
_
Practice came out of habit. Sasuke wasn’t sure what he was training for anymore, but it gave him something to do, it got him out of the house, got him to move. It was familiar, and maybe it comforted him a bit.
He knew the forms forward and back. He ran through them for hours, telling himself that once he was allowed, he would go back to taking missions. He told himself that he still had a reason to go through these motions; step into kick, kick into spin into kick again, all inexorably wired into his muscle memory. He still needed them. He needed them because he had a family to support now. He had a wife, and one day, he would have children, and he could use these same moves that had brought him through so much to take care of them too.
He told himself that, kick into step, step, elbow, elbow to spin, but something was missing. He was still only just going through the motions.
_
The first surprise was that she was kissing Naruto-how had that happened? When had it happened? Why-how? Her cheeks heated up.
The second surprise was that she initiated it.
Yes, in that order.
His hand was so warm touching her face, his mouth so surprisingly shy. He was probably as shocked as she was. His body was warm, half wrapped around her, with her hip pressed against her kitchen counter and ramen boiling on the stove. She blinked at him, and he blinked back.
Sakura broke the kiss, but for a moment, she didn’t try to get away. Instead, she leaned against him, cheek to cheek. Her eyelashes brushed against his skin. She couldn’t remember if that had ever happened with Sasuke. She knew they’d never had spontaneous kisses while making lunch, and that realization hurt her more than a little.
“I love Sasuke,” she said. So why wasn’t she stepping away?
“I know.” His arm went around her waist, fit there comfortably.
_
Sasuke knew something was wrong as soon as he got home. Sakura and Naruto were both transparent; Naruto couldn’t meet his eyes, and Sakura’s smile was so brittle and forced, it wasn’t any less suspicious than Naruto’s obvious guilt.
Sasuke was a smart young man. It didn’t take more than that to figure out what had happened, at least in the broad strokes. Something inside him seemed to fall as he put it together. He had always believed, deep down, that he would always have a place with them. No matter what he did, or how long he stayed away, a part of him had thought he would be able to have one place he still fit.
Seeing Sakura and Naruto together now, their secret written plainly on their faces, he suddenly realized how lonely it was to lose that.
There was a weird, drawn out moment. He thought they were trying to decide how to tell him. So he beat them to it. Voice tightly controlled to hide the numb shock, he told them that it was okay. He would let Sakura go.
It wasn’t that surprising, was it? Once she realized he wasn’t like her fantasy, she didn’t want him anymore.
Naruto and Sakura’s protests drowned out the end of his sentence.
_
Sasuke wanted Sakura to sleep in the middle, but she ended that immediately. No, she said. That’s too warm. That’s too squished. What if she has to get up in the middle of the night? And why, she added pointedly, should it just be assigned to her. It wasn’t as though she needed extra protection.
She knew how Sasuke’s mind worked.
Sasuke made it clear immediately that he wouldn’t sleep there, though. He had to have freedom to move. He couldn’t sleep with someone restraining him.
Naruto shrugged and suggested the obvious solution. In the end, he slept in the middle, with his nose in Sakura’s hair, his arm draped over her waist. She didn’t quite cuddle in against his chest, but she was close. Sasuke, on the other hand, pressed against his back. Their legs didn’t tangle, but they touched, and Naruto could feel the steady rhythm of his teammate’s breathing. For Naruto, it was the most comfortable place in the world, balanced between them.