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Sakura discovered that her life was ruined on a sleep-deprived Saturday morning right after she finished a twenty-four hour on call shift at the hospital.
It started with the decision, after finishing her handoff with the other physicians and nurses, to stumble over to Naruto’s apartment rather than her own.
It made sense to her — his apartment was closer to the hospital than her own, and a closer apartment meant a closer bed, and that’s all she cared about.
“Rough night, huh?” Naruto, the hyperactive, loud-mouthed teammate of hers, asked in a gentle, sympathetic tone when he opened the door.
She grumbled some nonsense as she let Naruto help her toward his bed, nearly falling into him as he removed her qipao with ease. He put something soft and large on her and she sighed as she finally rolled into his bed.
“Get some shut eye, Sakura-chan,” Naruto murmured, his voice close and low, like a lullaby with how musical it sounded to her. “I’m gonna go out for a quick mission. I’ll be back soon, okay?”
“Mmm, have fun,” she mumbled, eyes already shut, her breath shallowing as the cradle of sleep overcame her.
The last thing she heard before left the land of the living was Naruto’s warm chuckle and a whispered “sweet dreams.”
Her dreams were lovely, the kind that were so good, yet you couldn't remember. It was the essence of them that she recalled, whimsical and wonderful at times, and magical in the perfect mundaneness of them.
And, for whatever reason, Naruto always seemed to be involved.
When she woke up, Sakura chalked it up to the fact that was in his bed, wearing his baggy-shirt, her face pressed into his pillow.
Sakura blinked away her sleep, rolling onto her back and staring at the ceiling. Naruto's bedroom was small with an attached bathroom. He must have used it recently, the smell of his shampoo, a creamy citrus, mixed in the air with his cologne, a light, clean scent that cut with a bit of sharpness.
“Oh my god,” Sakura moaned as she sat on the bed and stretched her arms, a yawn ripping through her lips as her body dealt with the fatigue of sleeping too well. Sakura heard Naruto’s footsteps as he moved through his kitchen and Sakura made her way to his bathroom, washing her face and brushing her teeth with a spare toothbrush that she kept there before making her way to him.
“Mornin’ sleepy head,” Naruto said without looking up from the stove as he flipped some pancakes over a pan, a stack of them sitting on a plate beside him.
“Isn’t it evening?” Sakura asked, her voice a bit raspy from the sleep. She couldn’t help but eye Naruto, who was wearing sweatpants and a tank top that hugged his body — the musculature from his shoulder to his forearms something you could use as a model in one of Sakura's old anatomy textbooks.
“Yeah, you were really knocked out,” Naruto chuckled, the sound of it rich, heating up the back of Sakura's neck, before he turned his head to wink at her.
Sakura knew there was colour on her cheeks as she sat down at Naruto's dining table, silent as she watched him work the pancakes with practiced ease — it was her favourite breakfast after all, and the stack was completed in the time it took her to count the tiny stubble hairs growing on Naruto’s jaw.
“Here ya go, Sakura-chan,” Naruto said as he whisked his way over with a plate of pancakes for each of them. It was just the way she liked it, with sliced fruit and a pat of butter, lines of maple syrup poured in a crisscross pattern. It wasn’t as aesthetic as the ones she got at one of the fancy brunch places she frequented with Ino, but from the slightly wonky shape of the pancake to the mismatched fruit sizes, it was less a set of mistakes and more a collection of Naruto’s charms that was presented to her. “Nothin’ better than breakfast for dinner after a long day’s work, huh?”
"Thank you, Naruto," Sakura said as she took the plate from him, a strange swell inside of her causing her to hesitate. She knew she had a bad habit of taking from Naruto, it was so easy when he offered so much without a second thought, but it wasn't her only with long days at work. He was training to become the Hokage. “You didn’t have to do this for me. I’m sure you’re tired too…”
“Aw, where’s that comin’ from? Doing this little for you, it’s like breathin’ air, not even a thought on my mind." Naruto grinned at her, nudging her elbow with his own before gesturing to her plate. "C’mon eat your food, you must be starvin’.”
They were seated across each other at Naruto's small dining table and it was barely big enough to handle two plates and two bodies. Sakura had told him over and over to get a new one, but he always waved her off and said it was the one he always had and it was more than good enough.
It gave each meal a sense unintended intimacy, their feet brushing against each other beneath the table, the heat of Naruto’s shin pressing against her leg. When Sakura looked down at the table she saw Naruto’s hand, his wrist, his arm, comfortable motions with his prosthetic as he cut into the pancake. And when she looked up she saw Naruto’s face, the sharpness of his jaw, the stretch of his whisker-marks as he chewed on his pancake.
Naruto's eyes were like a settled storm, clear and strong, with an endless depth to the blue. His lashes were fine, like he'd used a curler, his skin kissed like the sun was his lover.
Sakura thought she had slept so much she’d been caught in a never-ending dream, maybe, how fantastic Naruto appeared to her.
Sweet syrup on her nose and the sweet citrus of his shampoo, a mixture like comfort that had been tattooed into her brain at this point. Naruto murmured to her between bites of his pancake, manners not quite perfect, but leagues better than when he was a child, a low husk as he spoke about his day, the timbre of his voice soothing even with the pressured abundance of words that spilled from his lips.
And, Sakura realized, or perhaps she knew for a while and for some reason, that day, she decided to ruin her life by accepting — that Naruto was sort of handsome, a kind of good-looking that never really crossed her radar, but it was so apparent to her then at his dining table under the flickering light of his worn out bulb.
His brightness made up for muted lighting. Bright hair, bright eyes and the brightest of smiles.
Warm skin that covered a toned body, soft facial features that resembled the pictures of his mother, but masculine in the parts of him that were sharp.
And better than all that was his soul, burning like an endless fire, like a beacon of humanity — yet always selfish for her.
“Hey, you okay?” The suddenness of Naruto’s touch startled her, his hand clasped around her wrist, stopping her from dropping her knife.
Sakura thought she started melting under Naruto's attention, his relaxed grip on her like being caught in a furnace, her cheeks and neck flushed.
"O-oh, silly me, almost dropped that, thanks. I, uh, guess, I wasn't paying attention..."
“No worries, Sakura-chan, but you haven't even taken a bite of your pancakes. What's up with that? Whatcha thinkin' so hard 'bout?"
Sakura shook her head like it would help her escape Naruto's scrutiny. “No, it’s nothing.”
“Well that’s a lie, yeah? C’mon, fess up, I won’t judge, whatever it is. In fact, I’ll probably come up with an awesome solution, y’know?”
Sakura laughed, Naruto absentmindedly brushing his thumb against her pulse, like her heartbeats belonged to him, and maybe they did.
Maybe they had for long time, from when she’d seen him bruised and battered and smiling, arm blown off at the Valley of the End, her eyes searching for him first at that ruined monument.
Or maybe it was from when she saw him after three years, as stupid as ever, as rude as ever, as kind as ever, his wide grin like a childhood treat she got to indulge in once more.
It might have been even before then, back when his youthful persistence was beyond annoying. Asking her to go out on dates every other day, and his exuberant praises and his lame antics — and the slight hesitation she had back then thinking, maybe he wasn't so completely terribly awful after all.
Or, more simply, maybe it was more a matter of time, being a part of Naruto’s life to the extent she was. A death by a thousand cuts, the good and bad of him, the parts that made her want to pull her hair out and the parts that made her think he was the best man she knew.
Like it was inevitable, being exposed to him, orbiting him, knowing him.
“C’mon, Sakura-chan,” Naruto whined, his face twisting into a pout. “At least tell me what’s so funny, yeah?”
Sakura gasped as she finished laughing, using the back of her wrist, the one that wasn’t snug in Naruto’s clutch, to wipe away some stray tears.
“I just realized, that I’m in love with you,” Sakura huffed out, smiling at Naruto before she pulled her hand out of his grip to start cutting at her pancake.
It was amazing on her tongue, pillowy and so sweet drenched in syrup, her appetite in full force now as she shoveled some berries into her mouth.
“Oh yeah?”
She looked up at Naruto’s face, still chewing on a bite.
She wondered if he’d be shocked, or shy. That would be lovely to see, his skin with a sunset blush.
Instead, as Naruto always had a habit of doing, he annoyed her with a sharpish grin, his body leaning on the table until she could smell the maple syrup on his lips.
“Took you long enough to figure that out. For a girl so smart, you sure are dumb when it comes to romance, huh?”
Sakura swallowed slowly, fighting the urge to deck Naruto across his face. “I changed my mind, I hate you.”
Naruto laughed, the second-best sound the heard in that day.
The best one the soft sigh he made when he kissed her, the taste of his lips sweeter that all the ‘breakfast for dinner’ pancakes in the world.