Chapter Text
The café was small enough that Sakura could hear the faint clinking of porcelain behind the counter and the quiet hum of conversation from the few other travelers scattered around the room.
She had chosen the seat across from Sasuke because sitting beside him felt like voluntarily making her heart stop again, and even then, she couldn’t quite bring herself to look directly at him for more than a few seconds at a time. Her gaze kept drifting toward the window, toward the little cup of tea between her hands, toward absolutely anything that wasn’t the man sitting across from her.
Sasuke, on the other hand, had apparently decided that looking at her was the only thing worth doing. He hadn’t touched his tea. He barely seemed to notice the passing villagers outside. His dark eyes remained fixed on her with such unwavering attention that Sakura eventually became painfully aware of every little movement she made—the way her thumb rubbed against the rim of the cup, the way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear only for it to fall loose again, the way her shoulders stiffened whenever she accidentally met his gaze.
It was ridiculous.
They had been teammates for years. She had fought beside him, saved his life, watched him nearly die, and once stood close enough to him to beg him not to leave. So why did sitting across from him in a tiny café suddenly feel more intimidating than facing a damn army?
Neither of them spoke for what felt like an eternity. Sakura took a tiny sip of tea simply because she needed something to do, immediately regretted it when the silence made the sound of the cup touching the saucer seem embarrassingly loud, and lowered her eyes again.
Sasuke didn’t seem bothered by the awkwardness. If anything, he looked almost… content. As though simply being able to see her was enough. Before Sakura could decide whether that thought was real or something her increasingly unreliable imagination had invented, an elderly woman approached their table carrying a pot of tea. She looked between them, then at the way Sasuke’s attention never once left Sakura, and a knowing little chuckle escaped her.
“So,” the old woman said warmly, setting another cup on the table, “are you a couple travelers?”
Sakura’s head snapped up.
“Travelers, yes!” she answered far too quickly. Then the rest of the sentence caught up with her. “C-Couple?! No! We’re not dating!” Both hands immediately shot up in front of her as though she could physically block the implication from existing. “We’re—” She cleared her throat with a cough, face turning pink. “We’re teammates.” Ended with a small smile.
The old woman simply smiled.
It was the sort of smile Sakura immediately distrusted.
“Of course, dear,” she said sweetly. “Please enjoy your time here with your teammate.”
Sakura’s shoulders dropped.
“Ugh…” She dragged both hands down her face before letting her forehead fall directly onto the table with a soft, defeated thunk.
Across from her, Sasuke’s mouth twitched.
Barely.
So subtly that Sakura would have missed it if she hadn’t been staring at the table.
He found her ridiculous.
Cute, even.
The thought surfaced naturally, almost disturbingly so, and Sasuke allowed himself the smallest flicker of amusement before returning to his usual expression. He was Sasuke Uchiha. Naturally, the thought remained unspoken.
The old woman wandered away, still smiling to herself.
Sakura lifted her head slowly, cheeks burning “Not a word.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
Sasuke raised one eyebrow. Sakura narrowed her eyes at him, then immediately looked away again. After another moment of silence, she finally cleared her throat. “So… what are you doing here, Sasuke-kun?”
“Hn.” Sasuke leaned back slightly. “I was following a group of criminals. Their last trace ended here.”
“Oh.” Sakura blinked. She hadn’t expected him to actually tell her.
Sasuke had always moved alone, even when they were genin. He disappeared when he wanted to disappear, followed whatever path he had decided upon, and rarely bothered explaining himself unless there was a practical reason to do so. Somehow, despite knowing that about him, Sakura still found herself surprised whenever he voluntarily offered information.
She fiddled with the edge of her sleeve “Do you… um…” Her voice became quieter. “Do you need any help with it?”
Sasuke’s gaze sharpened slightly.
“I’m not a sensor type,” Sakura quickly added, scratching her right cheek with one finger, “but I’m pretty good at picking up chakra signatures now. I picked up some things from Karin when I visited her a while ago.”
Sasuke’s eyebrow rose. “You visited Karin?”
Sakura looked at him as though he had just asked the strangest question imaginable “So you didn’t?”
“No.”
“Oh.” She tilted her head. “And I thought she was your teammate.” She hesitated “Or maybe more.” The last words came out so quietly they were almost swallowed by the sound of dishes being moved behind the counter.
Almost.
Sasuke heard them. Of course he heard them. His eyes remained on her. “She’s nothing more than a teammate.”
Sakura nodded slowly “Right.”
Then, Sasuke added, without changing his expression, “Nothing compared to you.”
Sakura nearly choked on her tea. Her head snapped toward him so quickly that her hair brushed across her cheek. “What?”
Sasuke simply looked at her. Nothing in his expression suggested that he had said anything unusual. Sakura’s thoughts, however, had completely ceased functioning.
Did Sasuke—
Uchiha Sasuke—just say I’m more than a teammate to him?
Her heartbeat became embarrassingly loud.
Was that flirting?
No.
Obviously not. Sasuke didn’t flirt. Could Sasuke Uchiha even flirt? Was that what he was doing?
Her brain began producing increasingly ridiculous possibilities at a speed that made her want to physically shake herself back into reality.
Then Sasuke chuckled. A quiet, low sound that made Sakura froze. He had actually laughed.
At her.
She stared at him, scandalized, while Sasuke looked almost amused by the sheer chaos he had managed to cause without even trying. “I rented an inn nearby,” he said, mercifully rescuing her from her own thoughts. “I can show you what I’ve found about them. We might need your medical skills too.”
Sakura’s face somehow became even hotter.
The inn. The place where he is staying. Together. In a room. Alone.
She nearly screamed internally. Kami. She was twenty years old. Twenty! Why was she blushing like a damn school girl in love again? It was information. They were going to exchange information. At an inn. A completely normal thing. A perfectly reasonable thing. There was absolutely nothing strange about it.
Nothing!
“Sure,” she said. Her voice came out remarkably steady.
Her face betrayed her completely.
Sasuke raised an eyebrow. He didn’t comment. He didn’t need to. Sakura’s expression practically announced the entire battle currently taking place inside her head.
They left the café together shortly afterward, the afternoon sun spilling warmly across the village road. For a while, neither said anything. Sakura adjusted the strap of her medical bag and tried desperately to recover some semblance of dignity, while Sasuke walked beside her with the same calm expression he had worn since they met.
Yet something had changed.
He found himself more aware of her than he had expected. The sound of her footsteps. The faint movement of her hair in the breeze. The little expressions she made whenever she was thinking. The way she occasionally glanced at him before quickly looking away.
Perhaps it was the absence of her that made everything feel so familiar now. Perhaps it was because he had finally admitted to himself what he had spent years refusing to name. Or perhaps he had simply forgotten how naturally Sakura fit into the quiet spaces beside him.
Whatever the reason, he found himself drawn toward her again.
And strangely, the distance of years seemed to disappear with every step.
Sakura began talking. Of course she did. She rambled about the village, about a shop she’d found earlier, about a strange medicinal plant she’d seen on the road, about how one of the innkeepers in the last town had tried to convince her that sleeping with a bundle of lavender beneath her pillow could cure nightmares. Sasuke answered occasionally with a quiet “Hn,” which only encouraged her to continue explaining.
It was almost exactly as it had been years ago.
Almost.
Sometimes Sakura drifted closer without realizing it, her shoulder nearly brushing his arm when the road narrowed. Each time, she seemed to notice a second later and subtly move away.
Sasuke never did.
He didn’t mind the closeness.
In fact, when she moved away, some quiet part of him noticed the absence. And for the first time in a long while, Sasuke wondered if perhaps finding Sakura had not been an accident after all.
The room Sasuke had rented was nothing like the ordinary inns Sakura had become accustomed to during her travels.
It was a traditional Japanese room, warm and quiet, with tatami beneath their feet, wooden beams darkened by age, and shōji screens letting in the soft amber light of late afternoon. A small garden stretched beyond the open sliding doors, green leaves stirring gently in the breeze. At the center of the room sat a low wooden table, and a neatly folded futon rested against one wall, waiting to be spread out later.
The simplicity of it should have made Sakura feel comfortable. Instead, she became painfully aware that she was sitting in a private room with Sasuke Uchiha after almost a year of convincing herself that she had finally learned how to live without him.
She had already rented a room at the same inn, which Sasuke discovered when she mentioned that she needed to retrieve a few things before they began looking through his information.
“You rented a room?”
Sakura looked up from the strap of her medical bag. “Of course.”
“You don’t need one.”
She blinked. “…What?”
“I barely use mine.” Sakura stared at him. “You’re staying here. I can go out for information.”
“That doesn’t mean I can sleep in your room, Sasuke-kun!”
His expression remained completely blank.
“It would make people misunderstand...”
Sasuke considered that for a moment before giving the same quiet response she had heard thousands of times throughout their childhood “Hn.”
Sakura narrowed her eyes. “Don’t ‘Hn’ me. You know exactly what I mean.” She could have sworn she saw the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth.
She ignored it.
Sitting beside him at the low table, Sakura carefully opened the bundle of papers he had collected and spread them across the tatami. Their shoulders were close enough that she could feel the occasional warmth coming from him whenever either of them shifted, and every time their hands nearly touched over the map, Sakura found herself becoming unnecessarily interested in whatever was written on the opposite side.
She hated how aware she was of him. His scent was familiar now in a way she hadn’t expected it to be, clean and faintly earthy from the road, mixed with the subtle smell of rain and fabric.
It reminded her of missions from years ago, of traveling beside him when they were younger, of evenings when Team Seven had stopped somewhere to rest and she had sat nearby listening to Naruto complain while Sasuke pretended not to hear him. Memories she had thought were safely buried suddenly felt frighteningly close.
Sasuke, however, seemed completely comfortable with the arrangement.
He began explaining everything he had discovered about the organization he had been tracking—their movements, the people connected to them, the villages where traces of them had appeared, the strange pattern behind their disappearances.
Sakura listened carefully, occasionally leaning closer over the map to inspect a location or asking a question when something didn’t add up. Sasuke knew she was intelligent. He had always known. Sakura had been the most perceptive member of their team when it came to things that didn’t involve brute force, and years of medical training had sharpened that intelligence even further.
She pointed to a river running along the eastern edge of the map.
“They keep appearing near water. But not just water.” Her fingertip moved between three different locations. “They’re all near smaller settlements with limited shinobi protection. If they’re transporting something dangerous, those places would be easier to pass through unnoticed.”
Sasuke’s eyes followed her movements.
“That’s what I thought.”
Sakura looked at him. “Then why didn’t you say that?”
“I wanted to see what you’d notice.”
She blinked “You were testing me?”
“Hn.”
Her mouth opened in disbelief before she slowly smiled in disbelief. “You could have just said you wanted my opinion.”
“I did.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I brought you here.”
Sakura stared at him. That was technically true. And somehow, that made her heart beat faster than it should have. She looked back at the map before he could notice the effect his words had on her.
The discussion continued for almost an hour. Sakura added one discovery after another, sometimes based on the information Sasuke had collected, sometimes from small details she had noticed while passing through neighboring villages. She had learned how to read people differently after becoming a medic; tiny inconsistencies in someone’s story, the way they held themselves, what they refused to mention, even changes in breathing could reveal more than words. Sasuke listened to every observation.
He didn’t need her help.
Not really.
At least, not this much. He could have continued investigating alone. He had done exactly that for years. Yet every time Sakura seemed ready to leave, Sasuke found another detail worth discussing, another question worth asking, another piece of information he wanted her opinion on.
He didn’t know why he was doing it. Perhaps because the room felt less empty with her sitting there. Perhaps because he had spent so long surrounded by silence that hearing her voice again had made that silence unbearable. Perhaps because some part of him simply wanted to keep her there a little longer.
Or perhaps it was only Sakura.
He didn’t need a better explanation.
Eventually, Sakura leaned back on her hands and exhaled “We can track them tomorrow.”
Sasuke nodded. “Hn.”
The room fell quiet again.
Outside, leaves rustled softly in the little garden.
Sakura gathered the papers into a neat stack and glanced toward the sliding door. “Well, I should probably return to my room.” She shifted forward and began to stand. Sasuke’s hand moved before he consciously decided to reach for her. His fingers closed around her wrist. Almost strangely gently.
Sakura stopped. She looked down at his hand first, then slowly raised her eyes to his face “Sasuke-kun?”
“You haven’t eaten dinner.”
She blinked, twice. “What?”
“I know a place in the village.”
For a second, Sakura simply stared at him.
He remembered..?
Before she could answer, her stomach betrayed her with an embarrassingly loud growl.
Sakura froze.
Her eyes widened and cheeks warmed in embarrassment.
For the love of God! Can’t you wait for a little longer?!
She mentally slapped her own stomach.
Sasuke’s eyebrow lifted.
Sakura cleared her throat, desperately attempting to reclaim whatever dignity she had left. “Yeah. Sure.” She gently pulled her wrist from his hand, though the warmth of his fingers remained against her skin long after he released her “Just give me a moment to change.”
“Hn.”
Sakura stepped through the sliding door and disappeared into the hallway.
The moment she was gone, Sasuke’s expression softened. Just slightly. The corner of his mouth lifted.
He had won.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he had won, but the quiet satisfaction settling in his chest was unmistakable.
Meanwhile, Sakura reached her own room, slid the door shut behind herself, and immediately leaned against it. She stood there for several seconds. Then covered her face.
“Godness, he asked me to dinner.” The words escaped in a tiny whisper. She stared at the wall “He actually asked me to dinner.” Her face became hotter“Nope.” She shook her head. “It isn’t a date.” She pointed firmly at herself as if giving a lecture “It is food. Two teammates. Eating food.”
Her reflection in the polished surface of the wardrobe looked completely unconvinced. Sakura groaned and dropped onto the edge of her futon, dragging both hands through her hair.
“I should’ve already moved on by now!” She flopped backward “Why haven’t I?!” The ceiling offered absolutely no answer. Sakura covered her face with both hands.
Almost 4 year without seeing him. Almost a years of traveling. Almost a year of learning how to wake up without thinking about him. Almost a year of telling herself that she had accepted things.
She had thought she was healed.
Maybe she was.
But apparently healing didn’t mean her heart had forgotten what it felt like to see Sasuke smile at her. Or to feel his hand around her waist. Or to hear him tell her she was more important than another woman. Or to have him catch her wrist and ask her to stay for dinner.
Sakura groaned into her palms “It’s his stupid handsome face!” She pulled at her hair “And his stupid voice.” She dropped her hands. “And his stupid ‘Hn.’” Her cheeks burned. “And his stupid—”
She stopped.
Her mind replayed the moment in the street. His arm around her waist. The warmth of his body beneath her hands. The way his eyes had looked when she said his name.
Sakura buried her face in a pillow “Oh god, I’m twenty years old,” she mumbled into it. “Why am I blushing like a damn schoolgirl again?” She rolled onto her back, staring helplessly at the ceiling, another thought surfaced.
Maybe it wasn’t just his face.
Maybe it wasn’t even the dinner.
Maybe it was the simple fact that Sasuke had looked at her as though he was genuinely happy to see her.
And that scared her more than anything.
Because Sakura had spent nearly 4 years learning how to live with the possibility that she had never truly mattered to him in the way she wanted. Now he was looking at her like she mattered. And she had no idea what she was supposed to do with that.