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Sasuke spends most of the morning waging battle against the dandelions growing all over the lawn. he comes in to make lunch and spends several minutes scrubbing out the dirt under his fingernails. “Should we buy some weed-killer spray?” asks Sakura, from amid her pile of paperwork spread out on the dining table.
“No,” says Sasuke, pulling eggs out of the fridge and at the same time casting an unimpressed eye over the mess of papers. Sakura sorts them into rough stacks and clears them off the table.
“No?” she frowns. “Do you enjoy weeding?”
“Come chop up this cabbage,” says Sasuke, instead. He cracks three eggs in a bowl, adds a pinch of salt, some amount of dashi that once Sakura had asked with the curiosity of a trained chemist, “How many milliliters?” and Sasuke had answered with the disinterest of a home cook, “Whatever feels right.”
Lunch is a light meal by Sasuke standards, only rice and soup and salad and rolled egg omelet. He considers the spread on the table, and –- apparently unsatisfied -– goes to the fridge and puts several umeboshi on a small plate.
“It’s not much,” he says, brow still dark, as they begin to eat. He sounds almost apologetic.
“Embarrassed by such a meager spread?” teases Sakura. She personally doesn’t mind. She’d survived pretty much on senbei crackers and instant coffee during her hospital residency. Warm steamed rice for every meal already seems an excess of luxury.
“Well,” considers Sasuke. He looks at the dishes and then at her, and then he says, rueful, “I suppose we are past the stage of showing off for each other.”
Considering that just last night, he had come up behind her when she had been reaching for a book on the high shelves, propped his chin on her head, and without even stretching taken the book; or that this morning, she had lifted the bed one-handed while he looked for a missing sock –- Sakura does not think they are in danger of ceasing to show off for each other. Still, she understands the spirit of his comment: a confession of comfort with who he is in the context of their relationship, a trust in her regard for him.
After lunch, as Sakura washes up the dishes, Sasuke stares out the kitchen window out onto the backyard. “You’re going to get premature wrinkles if you keep frowning like that,” warns Sakura.
Sasuke doesn’t reply, as if he hadn’t heard. He probably hadn’t heard, realizes Sakura, when he says, “I’m going out to weed,” apropos of absolutely nothing. Sakura watches with disbelief as he treks outside and hunkers down next to a dandelion patch and starts to dig.
Sakura has some business with Sai and while at his house, goes through the side door to the attached shop in front and visits Ino, who still runs the flower shop as a side business. It’s Tanabata season and Ino is busy with arranging bamboo and flowers into tall stands, from which to hang paper strips with wishes written on them.
“You want to write a wish, Forehead?” asks Ino, gesturing to the largest bamboo-flower arrangement, standing in one corner of the shop, already hung with a number of different colored paper strips.
“I’ll wish for your continued good business,” offers Sakura. In truth, she likes to write her wishes with Sasuke, and together hang them on the branches of the bamboo thicket next to the Naka shrine.
Ino hands her a pink colored paper strip –- “Of course,” says Sakura, dryly, “what other color?” –- and as she writes, they chat briefly. Business is brisk, apparently, because Tanabata is a festival of literal star-crossed lovers and flowers are in high demand. “Naruto stopped by yesterday and bought an enormous wreath of violets. Enormous. And I’m pretty sure Lee has bought cumulatively a bushel of roses this past week.”
“Lee, I figure, but did you ever peg Naruto for a romantic?” laughs Sakura. “Who would have thought, when we were in the Academy?”
“Who would have thought he’d be a good catch?” answers Ino.
They think on this for several moments, and exchanging laughing looks, agrees, “Hinata.”
“What about you?” asks Ino, as she hangs Sakura’s paper slip on a bamboo branch. “Are you coming to the festival this weekend?”
“Of course! I know, I know -– I’ll try to bring him along.”
“Not that I have any designs on your husband,” says Ino, sly, “but you know it’s a public service to dress him in a yukata and take him out for a walk in public, yes? Aesthetically speaking.”
“Is that sort of charity tax-deductible?”
“Forehead,” sighs Ino. “Did marriage change you so much? How are you managing to work taxes into this conversation?”
Before Sakura leaves, Ino gives her a bouquet of not-so-fresh gardenias. “They won’t sell now, but don’t they still smell nice?”
Sakura has a faint memory of flower meanings from password decoding classes at the Academy. “Secret love?”
“Nostalgic, isn’t it?” asks Ino. She hands the flowers to Sakura. “Well,” she amends, “I guess neither of us were really secret about it.”
When Sakura gets home, Sasuke is still outside weeding. “Amazing,” says Sakura, coming up next to him. She looks at the wide-brimmed straw hat he wears, and the towel hung around his neck, and the rubber-gripped gardening glove on his hand. She considers the gardenias in her arms, and then looks at Sasuke again –- she laughs. “Hello, secret love,” she greets him.
“Sakura,” he answers, squinting briefly up at her, and then looking back down to uproot a dandelion.
Sakura crouches down and watches him weed for a little while. “If you’re gardenias,” she says at length, “what kind of flowers am I?”
Sasuke pauses. He looks up and stares at her. At length, he says, slowly, “Sakura.”
Sakura rolls her eyes. “Too obvious. Give it some thought.”
Sasuke turns his attention back to his weeds. He scrapes at a patch of white clover.
“I heard Naruto gave Hinata a huge bouquet of violets,” says Sakura. “Which is a good confession flower, you know? They mean honesty.”
Sasuke picks up a slightly wilted dandelion, dirt still clumped in its roots, and hands it to Sakura. She stares at the plant, and then at him.
“A….weed?” she asks him.
Sasuke sits back on his heels, surveying the lawn. “Look how many of them have already turned white,” he says. “How many seeds do you think are on each one? I’m fighting a losing battle, aren’t I?”
Sakura eyes him warily. It’s still no compliment to be called a weed.
“Dandelions are stubborn and strong,” says Sasuke, resuming his digging of the white clover. “I don’t think I’ll ever be rid of them.”
Sakura picks some clumps of dirt off the dandelion.
“I don’t mind weeding,” continues Sasuke, picking up her question from before lunch as if no time had passed. “It’s quiet. It helps me think.”
“Isn’t it annoying?” frowns Sakura.
Sasuke barks out a laugh, and when he turns to look at her, his eyes are bright. “Really annoying,” he agrees.
Sakura sighs and stands up. “You’re so weird,” she says. When he reaches up to take the dandelion, however, she holds on to it. “No,” she says, “that’s the first flower you’ve ever given me.”
“I put a plum blossom in your sake cup last spring,” disagrees Sasuke. “Besides, I hear dandelion stems are good sauteed. Give it back, I’m going to cook it for dinner.”
“Romance,” sighs Sakura. “Yes, yes, fine, cook my flower.”
“And grilled rockfish with leeks and yuzu,” plans Sasuke. “Do you want something else?”
“Soup. Dango and lotus root soup.”
“All right.”
“And agedashi tofu.”
“Yes.”
“And –- ” Sakura tilts her head, considers her patiently waiting husband. She thinks about roses and violets and gardenias; about the sakuramochi Sasuke had made this past spring and the sauteed dandelion he wants to make for dinner; about her secret love in the Academy and the way now her medical journals pile on their dining table. “Nothing,” she says, smiling, and then she tells him, a proper greeting, “I’m home.”
“Mm,” he answers. “Welcome back.”