InsaneJournal

Het Challenge piece
Title: Candy and Flowers are Right Out.
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: Sasuke/Sakura, Naruto/Sakura
Rating: PG
Recipient: Shiegra
Summary: Sasuke is kind of a bastard, even when he doesn't intend to be. Sakura and Naruto completely fail to be surprised.



When Sakura stumbled home from her third straight shift at the hospital, blearily side-stepping the traps on her door, she was tired enough that she almost missed the package on her kitchen table entirely. She stood in the doorway for a long minute, just blinking at it. It was just sitting there, on her table: a plain, unwrapped box a little larger than her fist, with a folded slip of paper tucked in on the top that was sealed with wax stamped in an all-too-familiar fan pattern.

It took her far too long--whole minutes--to pull herself together enough to check for signs of entry, to throw out her senses in search of hostile chakra nearby, though with all the trained shinobi in the area, it was next to impossible to pick out a single thread. Since she'd been here almost five minutes without having her throat slit, though, she decided she'd assume either she was alone or whoever might be around didn't intend to harm her.

She sank down into the kitchen-table chair, buried her face in hands that had started to shake with exhaustion and adrenaline. “Kai,” she whispered, and then again with the formal hand-signs to boot when it failed to disappear. There wasn’t any packing-string or anything that might hide razor wire. She pulled a pinch of diagnostic powder from her medicine-bag, dusted for poisons or drugs that might be absorbed through the skin. She blew on it, both regular air and a tiny katon-jutsu to check for elemental triggers; she cut her finger and bled a few drops of blood on it. She murmured the triggers to every word-based jutsu she knew, hands clasped in her lap as she tried to calm herself down. Eventually though, faced with a dusty, blood-splattered, slightly singed but otherwise completely ordinary cardboard box, she had to admit that either it wasn’t a trap or she couldn’t avoid it.

She got up and went to the sink, washed the dust and blood off her hands and poured herself a cup of water. Sasuke. Had either been here, in her apartment, or else had sent someone to leave her a message and a—a what? She went back to sit at the table, staring at it. She shouldn’t even touch it—there’d be questions as it was, just with it being here, and Sasuke was still a traitor. They’d briefed both her and Naruto several times about what to do if a missing-nin ever attempted to contact them, and the penalties for not following procedure. She watched her hands reach up and pull open the looped flaps of the box like a sleepwalker.

Inside the box, nestled carefully in a wrapping of soft cloth, was a set of the finest miniature throwing stars Sakura had ever seen: tiny replicas of the huge one Sasuke had used to favor—did he still fight with it now? She didn’t even know—and small enough to hide inside her shirt without showing. She used the back of one blade, careful not to damage the cutting edge, to slice the wax seal off the note without breaking it.

“I heard you’d been training hard,” the note read. Sasuke’s handwriting was as elegant and beautiful as ever, even in what was clearly a hastily scribbled note. “You might find these useful.” Sakura didn’t even realize she’d started to cry until two hot drops threatened to blot out the last words.

“Sa-ku-ra-chan!” a voice caroled from the other room. “You naked?” She punched Naruto back into the doorway for his disappointed look when he came in just on principle, but he calmed down on his own when he caught sight of the note and her own tear-streaked face. “Sasuke-bastard?” Sakura tried to reply and couldn’t, throat hot and tight. He pulled her into a tight hug, and because he knew not to say anything else, she let him.

“Hey—hey Sakura-chan,” he said eventually, when she’d gotten to that hiccuppy phase of crying and he’d used up all his “being quiet” points for the next month. “It’s Valentine’s Day! Let’s go out on a date.”

“No,” she said, wiping the tears off her face with the bandages on the back of her hand. Naruto smiled.

“Aw, come on. Just one little date?” Sakura smiled too, though it still felt watery and sort of brittle.

“No way.” Naruto tucked a stray strand of hair back away from her face.

“Don’t be like that. If you let me take you out, you won’t have to cook OR do dishes tonight!” Sakura actually laughed aloud, and Naruto looked like he’d just beaten up ten S-rank enemy-nin by himself. “We can drop that off with the ANBU over at Granny Tsunande’s place on the way, and we might be able to get it back by the time we’re done, right? Maybe they’ll even find a clue to where Bastard is hiding!”

“Yeah,” she said, fingering the fine paper the note was written on. “That’d be good.” She gathered up the box as well and turned towards the door. “But you’d better not try to buy me ramen this time! If you want to take me out, we’re eating real food, with vitamins and minerals and everything.”

Naruto’s wailing complaints followed her all the way down the steps.
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