Work Text:
Sasuke Uchiha first became aware that Sakura was courting him on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday afternoon, although it would take him several months and a piece of jewelry that had belonged to his grandmother before he discovered that Sakura herself had absolutely no idea she was doing it.
At the time, however, there seemed very little room for misunderstanding.
He had returned from a mission shortly after noon with a shallow cut along his forearm, a considerably deeper one beneath his ribs, and the sort of exhaustion that made the walk from Konoha's gates to the hospital feel unnecessarily long, although none of his injuries were serious enough to justify remaining there once Sakura had finished examining him. She had disagreed with this assessment, naturally, because Sakura disagreed with almost every assessment Sasuke made concerning his own physical condition, and twenty minutes after he had informed her that the wound was "fine," he found himself sitting shirtless on the edge of an examination table while she stood between his knees, scolding him under her breath as glowing green chakra illuminated the irritated skin beneath his ribs.
"You tore the stitches."
"They were unnecessary."
"They became necessary when someone put a kunai through you."
"It didn't go through."
Sakura stopped healing him long enough to lift her eyes toward his face. "Do you want me to put one through you so you can appreciate the distinction?"
Sasuke considered her expression and wisely decided not to answer.
"That's what I thought."
She returned to the wound, her fingertips warm against his skin, and Sasuke allowed the familiar silence to settle between them as he watched her work. Sakura had become considerably less nervous around him over the years, particularly after the war and his eventual return to Konoha, and the girl who had once turned bright red merely because he looked in her direction could now order him to remove his shirt without the slightest hesitation before complaining about his inability to follow basic medical instructions.
Sasuke preferred this version of her.Not that he had spent much time considering which versions of Sakura he preferred.
At least, that was what he told himself.
"Done," she eventually announced, withdrawing her hands before reaching for a roll of clean bandages. "The skin is still fragile, so don't use fire techniques for at least two days, don't train tomorrow, and if you tear this open again, I'm going to heal you just so I can injure you myself."
"Hn."
"That wasn't agreement."
"It was."
"It was an irritating noise."
"You understood it."
"Unfortunately, I've known you long enough to speak fluent Sasuke."
There was a faint smile at the corner of her mouth as she said it, and Sasuke looked away before she could notice that something suspiciously similar had threatened his own expression.
Then Sakura began wrapping the bandage around him.
That, technically, was where the problem began.
There was nothing unusual about a medic bandaging an injured shinobi, and Sasuke understood that perfectly well, but Sakura did not use the ordinary white hospital bandages stacked on the counter beside her. Instead, after examining them with a dissatisfied frown, she opened one of the drawers beneath the examination table and retrieved a roll of pale fabric that Sasuke recognized immediately as something she carried in her own medical pouch.
"You don't need to use yours," he said.
"The hospital ones are irritating your skin."
"They're fine."
"Your definition of fine has lost all legal standing in this room."
Before he could object again, Sakura wrapped her own bandage carefully around his torso, passed it beneath his arm and across his ribs, then tied the final knot securely against his side. When she finished, she rested one hand briefly against his shoulder while checking her work, apparently satisfied with what she saw.
"There. Better."
Sasuke stared down at the pale fabric.
For a moment, something old and half-forgotten stirred in his memory.
It came from a time before blood had covered the Uchiha compound, when his mother still prepared breakfast every morning and his father still occupied the head of the dining table, when clan traditions had seemed like tedious things adults insisted children learn rather than the fragments of a dead family Sasuke would one day struggle desperately to remember.
There had been rules surrounding courtship among the Uchiha.
Many of them were old-fashioned even by the standards of Fugaku's generation, and Mikoto had once explained them to Sasuke and Itachi while laughing at the horrified expression on her younger son's face. They were not laws, exactly, nor were they formal requirements, but rather gestures passed through generations, small acts through which interest could be expressed without the embarrassment of saying it aloud.
One of them involved cloth.More specifically, a woman offering a man fabric she had carried or used herself, particularly for the purpose of protecting an injury.
Sasuke looked at Sakura. Sakura was already washing her hands. He looked back at the bandage.
Interesting.
He said nothing.
There was no reason to embarrass her simply because he had recognized what she was doing. Perhaps she had learned about the tradition somewhere. Sakura read extensively, after all, and the hospital archives contained records concerning nearly every major clan in Konoha. It was entirely possible she had discovered something about Uchiha customs and decided, for reasons Sasuke was not yet prepared to examine too closely, to make use of one.
The possibility followed him home.
It followed him into the shower, where he was careful not to wet the bandage despite being perfectly capable of replacing it himself, and it remained irritatingly present when he went to sleep that evening. By morning, Sasuke had concluded that he was probably reading too much into an innocent gesture.
Three days later, Sakura brought him tomatoes. Not ordinary tomatoes.
Pickled tomatoes.
Sasuke stood inside his kitchen staring at the small glass container she had placed on his table while Sakura moved around behind him as though she had not just complicated his week considerably.
"I made too much," she explained, opening one of his cabinets without asking permission because Sakura had apparently reached the point in their friendship where the concept of permission no longer applied to kitchens. "Ino gave me a ridiculous amount of vegetables because her mother bought too many, and if I had to eat all of them myself, I would've started photosynthesizing by the end of the week."
Sasuke continued staring at the container. Pickled foods prepared by hand had also been used in Uchiha courtship. He remembered that one more clearly because Mikoto had teased Itachi about it once, telling him that if a girl ever brought him homemade pickles, he was expected at minimum to notice what she was attempting. Sasuke had been seven at the time and had loudly announced that he would simply refuse them. Mikoto had laughed and told him to remember those words when he was older.
Apparently his mother had cursed him.
"You're staring at them like they're poisoned," Sakura said.
Sasuke raised his eyes. "You made these?"
"Yes."
"For me?"
Sakura blinked. "Well, yes. You like tomatoes."
That was remarkably direct. Sasuke felt something strange move beneath his ribs that had absolutely nothing to do with his recent injury.
"Hn."
Sakura narrowed her eyes. "If you're going to make that face, I can take them back."
His hand moved to the container before hers could reach it.
"No."
She stopped.
"I'll keep them."
Sakura's expression softened immediately, and the smile she gave him was warm enough to make Sasuke suspicious that she knew exactly what she was doing.
"Good."
She left ten minutes later. Sasuke ate every tomato. He washed the container himself rather than returning it dirty, and when Sakura came by two days later, he handed it back without mentioning the tradition or asking the question that had begun circling his mind.
The matter should have ended there.
It did not.
A week later, Sakura repaired his shirt.
It happened after a training session with Naruto, although calling it a training session was generous considering it had mostly consisted of Naruto attempting increasingly stupid attacks while Sasuke insulted him until both of them were exhausted. One particularly reckless Rasengan had caught the edge of Sasuke's sleeve and torn the fabric from shoulder to elbow, which Sasuke considered inconvenient but irrelevant until Sakura arrived and immediately noticed.
"What happened to your shirt?"
"Naruto."
"Hey!"
Sakura ignored Naruto entirely and walked toward Sasuke, catching the damaged sleeve between her fingers.
"This is ruined."
"It's a tear."
"Thank you, Sasuke, my eyes were struggling with the diagnosis."
"I can replace it."
"You can't keep replacing clothes every time you two decide training means destroying half the landscape."
Before Sasuke could stop her, Sakura was already opening the small sewing kit she inexplicably carried in her medical bag.
Naruto stared.
Sasuke stared harder.
Sakura sat beneath a tree and held out her hand. "Give it to me."
Sasuke remained motionless.
"The shirt, Sasuke."
Something deeply annoying entered Naruto's expression. Sasuke considered setting him on fire.
Instead, he removed the shirt and handed it to Sakura.
She repaired it while sitting beneath the shade, her pink head bent over the dark fabric as her fingers worked with surprising precision. Naruto attempted conversation twice, received no response from Sasuke either time, and eventually wandered away in search of food while muttering something about people being weird.
Sasuke barely heard him. There was another tradition. Of course there was another tradition. Repairing a man's clothing by hand was one of the oldest. By the time Sakura finished and held the shirt toward him, Sasuke had reached a conclusion that seemed considerably more reasonable than coincidence.
Sakura Haruno was courting him.
Rather aggressively, apparently.
He took the shirt.
"Thank you."
Sakura froze.
Sasuke frowned. "What?"
"You said thank you."
"I've said it before."
"Not without looking like the words were physically hurting you."
He put the shirt back on.
"Don't exaggerate."
Sakura laughed, and Sasuke found himself watching her for a second longer than necessary. If she was waiting for him to acknowledge her intentions, she would have to wait. Not because he intended to reject them. That realization arrived with considerably less resistance than Sasuke would later like to admit.
The idea of Sakura wanting him was not new. Sakura had loved him when they were children, or believed she had, and some version of those feelings had followed them through adolescence despite everything he had done to discourage them. What was new was the possibility of Sakura choosing him now, not as the unreachable boy she had idealized at twelve, but as the man she knew completely, including every unpleasant habit, every silence, every scar and every piece of history he could never erase.
Strangely, the thought did not frighten him as much as it should have.
It felt almost natural.
That was perhaps why Sasuke decided not to confront her immediately. If Sakura wanted to approach him according to old Uchiha traditions, he would allow her to do so, and when she was ready to state her intentions openly, he would answer.
Unfortunately, Sakura apparently had no intention of slowing down. She began leaving flowers in his house.
The first time, Sasuke returned from a three-day mission to find a small branch of white blossoms in a ceramic cup beside his kitchen window. He stared at it for nearly a minute.
Sakura possessed a spare key because someone needed access to the house while he was away, and Sasuke had given it to her months earlier without considering what that decision might imply. She watered the few plants he owned, collected messages that could not be left outside, and occasionally filled his refrigerator with food because, according to her, his habit of returning from week-long missions to an empty kitchen was "depressing."
The flowers were new. He touched one pale petal carefully. Among the Uchiha, flowers placed inside someone's home carried a very specific meaning.
I intend to belong here.
Sasuke closed his eyes. This was getting ridiculous. Sakura was essentially proposing marriage one domestic task at a time. The woman had no subtlety whatsoever. He left the flowers where they were.
When they began to wilt, he replaced the water. When they finally died, he preserved one blossom between the pages of an old book and refused to examine why.
The following week, Sakura invited him to dinner. By then Sasuke had stopped pretending he did not know what was happening. He arrived at her apartment precisely on time and found Sakura wearing an apron over ordinary clothes, her hair pulled into a loose knot while several pots simmered behind her.
"You actually came."
"You invited me."
"I invite you to things all the time."
"And I come."
"You come to maybe forty percent of them."
"That's almost half."
Sakura stared at him while Sasuke removed his shoes. Dinner consisted of grilled fish, rice, vegetables, miso soup and, sitting innocently near the center of the table, sliced tomatoes seasoned exactly the way Sasuke preferred.
He looked at Sakura.
She was serving rice. His gaze returned to the tomatoes. Cooking someone's favorite food and placing it at the center of a shared table was not technically an Uchiha courting tradition.
Thank God.
It was merely suspicious. Then Sakura placed the first serving into his bowl before serving herself.
Sasuke nearly dropped his chopsticks. The eldest Uchiha women had apparently been determined to make romance as unnecessarily complicated as possible.
Serving another person before oneself, within the privacy of one's home, was a gesture traditionally reserved for family or a prospective spouse.
Sakura sat down.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Sasuke considered asking.
Instead, he said, "Nothing."
"You're being weird."
"I'm eating dinner."
"You haven't eaten anything yet."
He picked up a tomato. Sakura watched him suspiciously for several seconds before beginning her own meal. Sasuke ate in silence while attempting to determine when exactly Sakura intended to formally ask him to marry her.
Apparently not that evening nor the next week.
Nor the week after that.
By the second month, Sasuke began to become mildly offended. There were rules to this.
Sakura could not simply bandage him with personal cloth, prepare food for him, repair his clothes, place flowers in his home, feed him at her table and then continue behaving as though nothing had happened. At some point, she was supposed to declare herself.
She did not.
Instead, she became even worse. One morning she adjusted his collar.
They were standing outside the Hokage Tower waiting for Naruto when Sakura looked at Sasuke, frowned and stepped closer.
"Hold still."
Before he could ask why, she reached up and straightened the collar of his cloak. Sasuke stopped breathing.
Her fingers brushed his neck.
"There."
Sakura smiled and stepped away.
Sasuke stared at her.
She stared back.
"What?"
He waited.
Nothing.
"Is something wrong?"
Apparently she expected him to do all the work.
Fine.
Sasuke went home that evening and opened a wooden chest he had not touched in years. Inside were the few possessions of his family that had survived the massacre and everything that followed, objects too personal to leave among the clan archives and too painful for Sasuke to examine often. There were several pieces of his mother's jewelry, his father's ceremonial cords, old photographs, letters and a small black lacquered box that had belonged to his grandmother.
Sasuke opened it.
Inside rested a silver hairpin shaped like an Uchiha fan, decorated with a tiny red stone at its center. His grandmother had received it from his grandfather when they became formally engaged.
Giving it to Sakura would not constitute a proposal, exactly.
It was an answer.
An acceptance.
A statement that her intentions were reciprocated and that, whenever she was ready to speak openly, Sasuke would not reject her. He stared at the hairpin for a long time. Then he closed the box. Three days later, he gave it to her.
Sakura was sitting on his couch reading a medical journal when Sasuke placed the small lacquered box on the table in front of her.
She lowered the journal.
"What's this?"
"For you."
Her eyebrows rose. "For me?"
Sasuke resisted the urge to point out that he had just said exactly that. Sakura picked up the box and opened it. Her entire expression changed.
"Oh."
Sasuke watched her carefully. She lifted the hairpin as though afraid of damaging it.
"Sasuke, this is beautiful."
"Hn."
"It looks old."
"It is."
"How old?"
"It belonged to my grandmother."
Sakura nearly dropped it.
"What?"
Sasuke frowned. She immediately placed it back inside the box with both hands.
"Sasuke, why are you giving me your grandmother's jewelry?"
This was not the reaction he had expected.
"You know why."
"No, actually, I very much do not know why."
Something cold entered Sasuke's stomach.
Had he misunderstood?
Impossible.
No one accidentally performed that many courting gestures.
"Sakura."
"Sasuke."
"You started this."
Her mouth fell open, "I started what?"
Now Sasuke was beginning to feel irritated.
"This."
He gestured vaguely between them. Sakura looked down at the space between their bodies as though expecting a physical object to materialize there.
"What is this?"
"You know."
"I genuinely don't."
"You've been courting me for two months."
Silence.
Sakura blinked and Sasuke waited for her response.
She blinked again.
Then, very carefully, Sakura placed the box on the table.
"I've been doing what?"
"Court—"
"I heard the word, Sasuke."
"Then why did you ask?"
"Because I'm trying to understand why you think I've been courting you!"
Sasuke stared at her in disbelief. "You gave me your bandages."
"I'm a doctor."
"You made me pickled tomatoes."
"You like tomatoes!"
"You repaired my clothes."
"Because Naruto destroyed them!"
"You left flowers in my house."
"Because your house looks like a funeral home!"
"You served me first at dinner."
"My mother would kill me if I invited someone over and served myself first!"
"You adjusted my collar."
"It was crooked!"
They stared at each other. Sakura's face had become increasingly red with every answer, while Sasuke felt the horrifying architecture of the previous two months beginning to collapse around him.
"No," he said.
Sakura made a strangled noise. "What do you mean, no?"
"Those are Uchiha courting traditions."
"How was I supposed to know that?"
"You did all of them."
"Apparently by accident!"
"All of them?"
"Yes!"
"That's statistically unlikely."
Sakura stared at him as though contemplating murder.
"You think I researched your dead clan's romantic traditions, spent two months systematically performing them, and then somehow forgot to mention that I wanted to marry you?"
"When you phrase it like that, it sounds unreasonable."
"Because it is unreasonable!"
Sasuke crossed his arms. Sakura stood and began pacing.
"Oh my God."
"It's not that serious."
She spun toward him.
"You gave me your grandmother's engagement jewelry!"
"It isn't engagement jewelry."
"You just said she got it when she became engaged!"
"It's a courtship acceptance piece."
"That sentence did not make it better!"
Sasuke looked toward the box. For perhaps the first time since the Fourth Shinobi War, he genuinely wished the earth would open beneath him. Sakura stopped pacing.
Slowly, very slowly, something in her expression changed.
"Wait."
Sasuke did not like the tone of her voice.
She looked at him.
"You thought I was courting you."
He said nothing.
"For two months."
Silence remained his safest option.
"And you didn't tell me to stop."
Sasuke's eyes narrowed.
Sakura's embarrassment was disappearing rapidly, replaced by something far more dangerous.
Amusement.
"You let me continue."
"Sakura."
"You kept the flowers."
His expression betrayed him.
Her eyes widened. "You kept the flowers?"
"They were in my house."
"You could have thrown them away!"
"That would've been rude."
A laugh escaped her. Sasuke immediately regretted everything.
"Oh my God."
"Stop."
"You thought I was proposing to you through pickled tomatoes."
"That's not what I said."
Sakura covered her mouth, but it did nothing to hide her laughter.
"This isn't funny."
"It's a little funny."
"It isn't."
"You spent two months thinking I was aggressively seducing you with vegetables."
"That is an intentionally stupid interpretation."
Sakura collapsed back onto the couch laughing, and Sasuke seriously considered leaving his own house. Then she looked at the box again.
Her laughter slowly faded. The silence that replaced it felt different. Sakura reached for the hairpin, running one fingertip carefully along the silver edge.
"So," she said softly, "what exactly does this mean?"
Sasuke knew immediately what she was asking. He could have avoided it. He had spent most of his life avoiding conversations that required him to expose anything vulnerable, and Sakura knew better than anyone how skilled he was at disappearing behind silence whenever words became inconvenient.
But he had already placed the hairpin in front of her.
There was very little left to protect.
"It means I accepted."
Sakura looked up.
"You accepted something I wasn't offering."
"I know that now."
A smile tugged at her mouth.
Sasuke frowned. "Don't."
"I'm not laughing."
"You're about to."
"I'm really not."
She looked down at the hairpin again, and when she spoke, her voice was quieter.
"What if I had been?"
Sasuke became still. Sakura's fingers stopped moving.
"If I actually had been courting you," she continued, carefully avoiding his eyes now, "what would you have done?"
"I already showed you."
Her gaze lifted immediately. Sasuke nodded toward the hairpin. Understanding reached her slowly. The blush returned, but this time Sakura did not laugh.
"Oh."
Sasuke looked away.
For several seconds neither spoke, and suddenly the room felt much smaller than it had before. Sakura turned the hairpin carefully between her fingers.
"Can I ask something?"
"You usually do regardless."
She ignored that. "If the hairpin means you accept the courtship, what happens after that?"
Sasuke hesitated.
"Traditionally?"
"Traditionally."
"The person who initiated it decides whether to continue."
Sakura's mouth curved. Sasuke recognized danger immediately.
"And since apparently I initiated it..."
"Accidentally."
"Still counts."
"It does not."
"You spent ten minutes arguing that it did."
"I was operating under incorrect information."
Sakura stood and Sasuke watched her approach. There was something deeply unfair about the confidence in her expression considering she had been the one panicking only minutes earlier. She stopped directly in front of him.
"Fine."
"Fine what?"
"Let's say it doesn't count."
Sasuke waited. Sakura held his grandmother's hairpin between them.
"Then I'll do it properly."
For perhaps the first time in their entire acquaintance, Sasuke had absolutely no response prepared.
Sakura smiled.
"Uchiha Sasuke."
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"I'm courting you."
There was enough amusement in her voice to annoy him, but beneath it was something softer and unmistakably sincere. Sasuke looked at her for several seconds. Then he took the hairpin from her fingers.
Sakura's smile faltered.
Before she could misunderstand, Sasuke stepped closer, lifted one hand to the side of her head and carefully slid the silver pin into her pink hair.
His fingers lingered there for a moment.
Sakura stopped breathing.
"So I've been told," he murmured.
Her cheeks turned scarlet. This time, Sasuke was the one who almost smiled.
Unfortunately, Sakura recovered quickly.
"Does this mean I have to keep making you pickled tomatoes?"
"Yes."
"That's not part of the tradition."
"It is now."
She narrowed her eyes. "You're incredibly demanding for someone who accidentally got engaged because I fixed his shirt."
"We're not engaged."
"You gave me engagement-adjacent ancestral jewelry."
"That isn't a phrase."
"It is now."
Sasuke sighed.
Sakura laughed softly, and before he could anticipate what she intended, she rose onto her toes and pressed a quick kiss against his cheek.
He froze.
Sakura pulled back. Her smile immediately became suspicious.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You froze."
"I didn't."
"You absolutely did."
Sasuke stepped away and Sakura followed him.
"Is kissing also an ancient Uchiha courting tradition?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"What about cheek kisses?"
"Sakura."
"Forehead kisses?"
He gave her a warning look. She was enjoying this far too much.
"Interesting," she murmured. "I suppose we'll have to create some new traditions."
Sasuke turned toward the kitchen before she could see the warmth beginning to reach his ears. Behind him, Sakura laughed again.
He should have been embarrassed. He was, to some degree.
He had spent two months believing Sakura was deliberately courting him because she had unknowingly stumbled through a collection of traditions belonging to a clan that no longer existed, and in response he had given her an heirloom that had survived three generations, one massacre, a war and years of neglect inside a wooden chest.
It should have been humiliating.
Instead, when he glanced back and saw Sakura standing in the middle of house with his grandmother's silver hairpin resting among her pink hair, Sasuke discovered that he could not bring himself to regret the misunderstanding.
Perhaps his mother would have found the entire thing hilarious.
She probably would have reminded him of the afternoon when he had been seven years old and arrogantly announced that if a girl ever offered him homemade pickles, he would simply refuse them.
Sasuke looked toward the empty glass container Sakura had brought him weeks earlier, which for some reason he had still not returned.
Then he looked at Sakura.
"Are you free tomorrow?"
Her eyebrows rose.
"Why?"
"Dinner."
Her smile appeared slowly. "Are you asking me on a date?"
Sasuke considered the question.
"Yes."
Sakura's expression softened, all traces of teasing disappearing for one quiet moment.
"I'd like that."
He nodded. Then, because apparently she was incapable of allowing him dignity for longer than thirty consecutive seconds, Sakura's smile turned mischievous again.
"Should I bring tomatoes?"
Sasuke stared at her. She lasted perhaps two seconds before laughing. He turned away with a quiet sigh, but Sakura caught his hand before he could escape into the kitchen, slipping her fingers naturally between his.
Sasuke looked down at their joined hands.
There was no Uchiha tradition for that.
No forgotten rule from his childhood, no carefully preserved gesture his mother had once explained, no hidden meaning Sasuke needed to decipher before deciding what Sakura intended.
She simply held his hand.
After a moment, his fingers closed around hers. And perhaps, Sasuke thought as Sakura leaned comfortably against his shoulder, it was better that way.