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Some people fall in love the easy way. Sasuke and Sakura did it backwards.
It had been three months since they'd left Konoha behind, three months of walking dirt roads together with no one else around. Sakura still wasn't used to it — being alone with him after everything, really alone, no team, no mission, no war. Just the two of them and whatever they didn't know how to say to each other yet, because they'd both changed so much.
They'd been to so many villages by now that they blurred together — market stalls and inn rooms and dirt roads that all looked the same after enough weeks on the road. But some things she remembered clearly.
She remembered the village with the lantern festival, so crowded that she lost sight of the street ahead, and how his hand had found her waist without a word, steering her through the current of people like it was the easiest thing in the world. He'd just done it, like an automatic response. And she'd spent the next ten minutes trying to remember how to breathe normally, achingly aware of his breath fanning steady and unbothered against her hair every time he leaned in to guide her past someone.
She remembered another village where it had rained for three days straight, and he'd talked more in that one afternoon inside a dark cave, waiting for the storm to pass, than he had in the entire first week of their journey.
He'd started smiling more after that, too. He told her about the years he'd spent away, stories that used to come out in three clipped sentences now stretching into something almost like storytelling, small details creeping in that she was fairly sure he added just to watch her reaction. And he watched. That was the part that undid her, the way he'd started looking at her while he talked, like her face was more interesting than whatever story he was telling, until she felt the heat crawl up her neck and had to look away first. He absolutely never looked away first. If anything, he smirked, some quiet, satisfied thing tugging at his mouth, like making her blush had become a small private hobby of his.
But it went both ways, and she knew it. Whenever she got bold enough to throw something back, like a comment that landed a little too close, a compliment dressed up as a joke so she could take it back if his face did something she didn't like, he was the one who faltered. The smirk would disappear. He'd go quiet in a different way than usual, more like he didn't trust his own voice for a second, and find something very important to look at that wasn't her. It was almost funny, how easily she could still fluster him, after everything.
But Sakura used to be so much bolder at twelve! Throwing herself at Sasuke with nothing to lose, declaring things at the top of her lungs in front of anyone who'd listen, humiliation be damned. It made no sense, really, that she was worse at this now, closing in on twenty, than she'd been as a loud, heartbroken kid who didn't know the first thing about him. Funny, because she had less to lose now than ever; their journey itself was proof of that. But somehow the more certain something felt, the harder it got to reach for it.
So she covered it the way she covered everything: by talking too much, teasing too hard, throwing out little flirty comments that made her want to sink into the ground the second they left her mouth. Sasuke, for his part, was fine with her hand on his arm, her shoulder against his — that kind of closeness had stopped costing him anything so many years ago. It was the other kind that still threw him: the teasing, the almost-declarations, anything that asked him to say something back instead of just standing there and letting it happen.
But Sakura knew, or thought she knew, that for him it had started to feel like something else too, a kind of quiet suffocation, the particular kind that came from wanting more, maybe too much, and not knowing if he was allowed to reach for it. She caught it sometimes in the half-second before he looked away, something restless behind the composure, like he was standing in front of a door he didn't know was his to open.
Knowing Sasuke — so brilliant at some things, equally hopeless at others — he probably thought the mere existence of that door was commitment enough on its own. She wouldn't put it past him to have decided, somewhere along the way, that fingers against her forehead had already made them something. Of course he did, but not officially.
They'd been jumping tree to tree for the better part of an hour, chasing daylight before it ran out on them, when Sakura noticed him not quite looking at her — glancing, then very deliberately looking somewhere else, jaw a little tight.
"What?" she asked, catching a branch and swinging up beside him.
"Nothing."
She followed his line of sight anyway, or tried to, and only then remembered what she'd put on that morning — a shorter skirt than the ones she's used to wear, mesh underneath, more skin than fabric by the time you accounted for how much it moved. She'd grabbed it half-asleep, thinking about the heat, not about tree-hopping, not about anyone's eyes on her legs every time she landed.
Not like it was a problem when it was his eyes, thought.
"Oh." She smirked, delighted despite herself. "You could've just said I look ridiculous jumping around in this."
"That's not—" He caught himself, ears going red, and looked away again, harder this time, like the tree line ahead had suddenly become fascinating. "It's fine. It's comfortable, right? That's what matters."
"Comfortable," she agreed, biting back a laugh. "Yes, that's exactly the word I'd use for whatever's happening to your face right now."
He didn't answer that. He just pushed off the next branch a little harder than necessary, putting a few extra feet between them, which only made her laugh for real.
But she wasn't one to talk at all. Sakura had been doing her own share of looking — the stretch of his arm every time he caught a branch, easy and unthinking, muscles she'd touched so many times to heal. The width of his shoulders when he was ahead of her, blocking out more of the sky than seemed fair. The simple, irritating fact that he was so much taller than her now, taller than she'd braced for even after three months of walking beside him.
His hair, flowing with the wind and giving her several glimpses of his forehead, showing more of his face and allowing her to drown deep into his eyes even more.
God, he was so hot.
It wasn't new information, of course. She'd known all of it for years, clinically, the way a medic knows a body. It was different, somehow, watching it move through trees in the low afternoon light, knowing there was nothing clinical left in the way she was looking at him.
So really, they were even. He could look however he wanted, because she was probably staring even more.
Easy to say, though.
Because, of course, they'd already done the hard part. She'd screamed her feelings at him outside the village gates when they were barely thirteen. He'd left her unconscious on a bench with a quiet apology she wouldn't hear for years. They'd tried to kill each other. They'd cried in front of each other, bled in front of each other.
They had done everything, in the wrong order, the hard way. Everything except kissing.
It felt almost animalistic, catching herself lusting about his face, his body, that way, when they hadn't even managed the basics. Every milestone imaginable, checked off in the worst possible order, except the one that should have come first.
The rain started without warning, on a whim, several droplets falling at once, catching them mid jump.
One moment they were the only sound in the forest, the sky was gray but well-behaved, and the next, the sky itself had decided to test them. Sakura cursed under her breath, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders, but she knew they were doomed and the nearest real shelter was probably miles off.
"We're not going to make it to the next village in time," she said, half-shouting over the noise of the rain, waving him down toward the ground as the branches turned slick beneath them.
Sasuke didn't answer right away. He landed beside her, following her down, and took his time scanning the trees on both sides, grunting because there was no cave, nothing big enough to matter, just the same soaked forest stretching out in every direction. Sakura was already bracing for a night in wet clothes when she felt the air shift.
A familiar chakra, thick and purple, began rising around them.
"Sasuke, wait—" She grabbed his sleeve before the ribs of the Susanoo could finish forming, but it was useless. "You don't have to do that."
"It's fine."
"It's not fine, you've barely rested these last few days." She wiped the rainwater from her eyes, stubborn even though she was soaked to the skin. "That thing eats chakra like nothing else. We can find a tree, wait it out, I don't need—"
"Sakura." His voice softened, like he was trying not to push too hard. He was looking at her properly now, and something in his expression had gone quietly worried. "It's rainwater. Let me handle it, okay?"
"I'm not asking you to handle it. I'm asking you not to." She crossed her arms. "If anything, I can handle a little rain."
Sasuke pushed his hair back with his hand, rain running down his wrist, and seemed to actually think about it for a second.
"We could build a fire," he suggested finally, glancing around at the treeline. "Find something to work with, put together some kind of shelter. It wouldn't take long."
Sakura hesitated. There hadn't been a plan behind the protest, just some instinct she didn't fully understand, something about not wanting to watch him burn through chakra just to keep her dry, even though his instant reaction was cute.
Then a thought struck her, and it probably had to do with the way he pushed his hair back. She was simple like that. They'd already done everything else, the hard way, in the wrong order. This — just leaning in, closing the distance — couldn't possibly be harder than any of that.
"You know," she said, tilting her head, deciding it was worth the shot, "I've always wanted to kiss in the rain."
The moment the words left her mouth she wanted to snatch them back out of the air. Heat rushed to her face despite the cold, and she was already opening her mouth to laugh it off, turn it into a joke, anything—
The Susanoo shook for a second before disappearing completely.
The rain hit them immediately, and Sasuke made a small, strangled sound, his concentration gone so fast it seemed to startle even him. He stared at her, ears burning red, clearly having no idea what to do with what she'd just said.
"I— that wasn't—" Sakura fumbled, water running down her face, torn between laughing at how flustered he looked and sinking straight into the ground. "Forget I said that. It was stupid."
"It wasn't stupid." Sasuke's voice came out rougher than he meant it to. He wasn't quite looking at her — more at some point just past her shoulder, like meeting her eyes might make this harder than it already was, because it was always that way for him. Annoying.
"You don't have to—"
"Sakura."
She stopped.
He took a step closer, slow, like he wasn't fully sure this was the right move, rain plastering his hair down and dripping off his jaw. His hand came up halfway before he seemed to lose his nerve, hovering near her cheek without quite landing.
"Can I—" he started, and didn't finish, like he hadn't figured out the rest of the sentence either.
Her heart was doing something ridiculous, and her mouth started to follow along. "Yeah," she breathed. "Yeah, please. I know it's not the best scenario, they make it really romantic in stories, and this is just — we're soaked, and my hair's a disaster, and there's mud literally on your — never mind, that's not the point, the point is I don't care, I just — I've thought about this so many times, more than I'd ever admit out loud, and I don't want to wait for some perfect moment that's never going to happen, and you look really good and I've been dreaming about—"
Sakura stopped her stupid monologue, because Sasuke was closer now than he'd ever been. And that was saying something.
Over the years, they had hugged. She had pressed her cheek to his, breathed him in, in those tight and desperate hugs. She had cried into his lap once, when she thought he was dead, and he into hers, when the pain the seal caused was too much to handle. But like this — face to face, eye to eye, this close? She hadn't had this. Not once.
His eyes were dark, darker than she'd ever seen them, and his hair had fallen every direction except across his face, leaving nothing to hide behind, which meant she could see the color creeping up, faint at first and then unmistakable, especially at the tips of his ears. A single drop of rain hung caught on his bottom lip, trembling, not quite ready to fall.
If Sakura let her eyes drop even slightly, she'd see exactly how his soaked clothes were clinging to him now — and absolutely not, she was not doing that, not right now, not with him standing this close and looking at her like that.
"Are you done?" he asked. His voice had dropped somewhere low and rough, quieter than the rain, almost like he'd had to dig for it, since it wouldn't come out. "Because I want to— " He stopped himself, exhaled, tried again, steadier this time. "I'm going to kiss you now."
Sakura nodded, almost pathetically, any trace of her earlier rambling gone completely.
Sasuke closed his eyes first — before she did, before either of them had really touched — and she wondered, for half a second, if it was her eyes that had done it. If maybe he couldn't take being looked at like that, not by her eyes, not with everything she probably wasn't hiding as well as she thought.
Her heart pounded, pathetic and clinically concerning, the moment his lips finally touched hers. Sasuke paused there, just pressing, and the gentleness of it was enough to steady her enough that some reckless burst of courage demanded more.
They'd already come this far. She could survive this too.
She followed his hand up to her cheek, pressing her palm over his, cold and impossibly warm at once. Rainwater slipped from his hair down his temple, and she could smell the rain on his skin, clean and earthy.
Her fingers trailed along his arm again, over the curve of his shoulder and up to the back of his neck.
For a moment, the kiss stayed soft and almost still, the rain drumming steadily around them. Then Sasuke's lips started to move against hers, and the warmth of his mouth made her forget how cold she was. She parted her own without thinking, drawing him a little closer. The shift caught him off guard enough that his teeth grazed her bottom lip — barely, gently — and he pulled back immediately, a flush spreading hot across his face before he ducked and hid it against her shoulder with a low grunt.
"Is that what you wanted?" he asked, his voice trembling against her skin. "A kiss in the rain?"
"Y-yeah. I could use some more, though."
He didn't move for a moment, still hidden against her shoulder, like he needed another second before he could face her again. When Sasuke finally lifted his head, his ears were still burning, but there was something else there too — something almost like a smile, small and disbelieving, like he couldn't quite decide if she had actually said that.
"Sorry, feeling a little too brave," Sakura giggled, despite her warm face up to her neck.
He kissed her again.
This time, there was less hesitation. His lips lingered against hers, warm against the cold rain, and his hand slowly found her waist. Sakura's arms slipped around his neck, pulling him down closer as another shiver ran through her — though she wasn't sure anymore if it was from the cold.
They both let out a quiet, startled sound when their tongues brushed for the first time. They broke apart almost immediately, their flushed faces a stark contrast to the darkness of his eyes, their foreheads nearly touching.
Sasuke swallowed, his gaze dropping briefly to her lips.
Then he reached for the back of her neck, drawing her in again, angling her head as he kissed her once more — still a little unsure, but no longer quite as careful.
The rain pattered against them, cold droplets slipping between strands of hair and down the backs of their necks, but Sakura barely noticed anymore. She could only feel the warmth of his mouth, the faint tremor in his fingers where they rested against her skin, and the way his breath grew unsteady whenever she kissed him back.
She moved closer without thinking, her hands sliding from his shoulders to the nape of his neck. His hair was damp beneath her fingers, softer than she'd expected. Sasuke made a quiet sound against her lips, almost surprised, and the little hitch of breath sent warmth rushing through her all over again.
He pulled back just enough to breathe, their noses brushing, rainwater glistening along his lashes.
"Your hair is not a disaster," Sasuke breathed out, his voice rough and soft at the same time. "You look pret— you look so beautiful."
That was what Sakura said in her rant, previously, and she was amused that Sasuke absorbed this enough in his mind that he had to address it during the kiss.
"Keep your hair out of your face like that," she answered in the same fashion, kissing him between words, or talking between kisses, sometimes exploring the corner of his mouth, other times his cheek. "You look so good. I like looking at you."
"Rinnegan," he supplied quietly, like it was reason enough, and maybe it was in his context; old habit, old reflex, keeping the strange purple eye hidden more out of instinct than shame at this point.
"Fine." She pulled back just enough to look at him properly, thumb brushing the hair away from his temple anyway. "For tonight, then. For me."
Sasuke looked thoroughly disheveled by now: lips swollen, hair a complete mess, eyes watching her with something almost pitiful for having pulled away even that little bit, his gaze refusing to leave her mouth.
"For you," he repeated, and his voice had dropped into something she'd never heard from him before, something quiet, unguarded, almost devotional, like the words cost him nothing at all now that he'd finally decided to say them. "Whenever you want."
Something in her chest gave way completely, her heart doing that same ridiculous, pathetic thing again, faster now, like it hadn't gotten the memo that the kissing had already happened. Sakura's face was burning, she could feel it climbing down her neck too, and there was a strange, unsteady warmth spreading through her whole body, the kind that made her fingers tingle and her knees feel a little less reliable than usual, an unfamiliar heat under her belly. She pulled her arms back from around his neck, hands finding his face instead, his cheeks caught soft between her palms, like she needed something solid to hold onto or she might actually come apart. "If I hadn't asked, when would you have kissed me?"
"...I didn't know if you wanted me to."
She thought of all the times she'd wanted to — shamelessly, embarrassingly so — and yet some part of her suspected she wouldn't have survived it any sooner than this. That it had come at the right time, the right moment.
Somewhere above them, the rain had stopped. The forest had gone quiet in that particular way it does right after a storm passes, with water still dripping slowly from every leaf, the air washed clean, the last gray light of the afternoon breaking soft through the clouds.
"How long have you been thinking about it?"
Sasuke thought about it, finally meeting her eyes properly. "The forest, during the exam. The hospital. The night I left—"
"Since the trip started, I mean," she corrected quickly, a smile tugging at her mouth despite herself at how simply he'd said it, like it hadn't been years and years and an entire war between those moments.
All those times? Sakura's mind snagged on his answer, every one of those situations, of everything that came after. Could something as small as a kiss — not that it would have been small, not at thirteen, not to either of them — have kept him from disappearing into himself, into his own thirst for revenge, the way he did?
Would they ever have this trip? Their kiss in the rain?
Would they even need to?
Stripped bare of the rain now, of the noise and the excuse it had given her, Sakura felt her earlier boldness drain right back out of her, replaced by the same old shyness settling over her shoulders like a second cloak. Her face went warm all over again and she found herself looking anywhere but directly at him.
"Well…" she started, one of her hands fidgeting with the collar of his shirt. "Are you going to do this again?"
The man in front of her didn't answer right away. Instead, he reached for his own cloak, chakra curling faint and warm along the fabric until the water clinging to it began to lift away in thin curls of steam, the damp fibers drying almost on contact. Then, without asking, he tugged her own soaked cloak off her shoulders and replaced it with his, warm and dry, settling it around her like he didn't even hear what she said.
"Better?" he asked, instead of answering her question at all.
Sakura pulled the cloak tighter around herself, hugging the warmth of it, the ache of the cold finally starting to ease out of her fingers. She pouted anyway, mostly on principle, eyeing him over the edge of the fabric.
"Show-off," she muttered, though it came out fonder than she meant it to. Then, after a beat, more thoughtful: "I could probably do that too, you know. Not the steam part — I don't have the affinity for that — but the warming itself. Chakra control is kind of my whole thing."
"Hm." Something that might have been the ghost of a smirk. "Didn't say you couldn't."
"You didn't have to. You just did the cool fire trick and stood there looking smug about it."
"I'm not smug."
"You are." She pulled one hand free from the cloak anyway, chakra gathering warm and green-tinted in her palm — the same glow she used for healing, just redirected, softer, meant to soothe instead of mend. She didn't need to touch him for it to work. She did it anyway, pressing her palm flat against his jaw, chakra sinking in slowly to regulate the temperature beneath his skin.
Sasuke went very still, welcoming the warmth.
"You didn't have to touch me for that," he pointed out, voice quieter than before.
"I know." She didn't pull her hand back. "Wanted to."
Something in his expression softened, the smugness draining right out of it, replaced by something closer to the reverence from earlier — like her hand on his face was doing a lot more than regulating his body temperature, and they both knew it. "Yes," he said, quiet, like he'd only just gotten around to answering her. "I am going to."
It took her a second to catch up and to remember she'd even asked, back before his demonstration of coolness. When she did, her chakra faltered against his skin, just for a moment, her whole hand going a little unsteady.
"Good," she managed. "Good answer."
Sakura hesitated for half a second, chakra still glowing faint against his jaw, before adding, quieter, almost daring him to react: "Well, I might kiss you too. Anytime, so be prepared."
He swallowed, gathering his thoughts before gladly taking it as a challenge.
"Fine."
She let the chakra fade from her palm a moment later, the warmth settling into him one last time before she pulled her hand back, tucking it safely inside the borrowed cloak again.
"Well," Sakura said, clearing her throat, color still high on her cheeks, "we can move on to the next village now."
Sasuke nodded, already reaching to pick up his pack from where he'd dropped it.
"And next time we stay at an inn," she teased, a slow, deliberate smile tugging at her mouth, "we can share the bed."
Her face was burning like crazy, but she didn't look away this time, didn't backtrack or laugh it off. She'd meant it, and some reckless, giddy part of her had already decided that testing exactly how far she could push him tonight was worth the risk.
Sasuke choked on absolutely nothing, coughing once into his fist, ears going a violent shade of red all over again.
"Sakura."
"What? I'm just being efficient! Saves money. And space." she grinned.
He recovered enough to give her a look — flat, unimpressed, betrayed slightly by the color still sitting high on his cheekbones. "We'll see how brave you are when I'm actually close to your face again."
"Is that a threat?"
"It's a fact." He shouldered his pack, already turning to walk, but not before adding, repeating her words, quiet enough that she almost missed it: "You look really good. I've been dreaming about it. Don't act surprised when I remember that."
Sakura stood there for a solid three seconds, completely speechless, before she had to jog to catch up with him.
They'd skipped so many steps, done everything so out of order, that filling in the gaps now should have felt easy.
It absolutely did not.
But a girl could dream, especially when the boy in question kissed that good.