Chapter Text
The day Sakura moves in with them is short of monumental. She knocks on their apartment door, yellow duffel bag at her feet and an overstuffed red backpack resting on her shoulders.
“So--” Sasuke reaches to help her with the duffel-- “why are you staying here again?”
“Ino and I had a big fight,” the young surgeon says, tying her hair back with a ponytail. “Plus, Sai and her wanted the place to themselves for the weekend.”
“About?”
Sakura side-steps her boyfriend gracefully and opens the top dresser drawer which currently houses her toothbrush, mini face cleanser, and what Naruto likes to call Sasuke's shame cigarettes. Ignoring the question, she begins unpacking her clothing, folding her shirts into neat squares and stacking them into the drawer.
“Sakura.” The Uchiha shuts the drawer as the doctor reaches into her backpack. He knocks on the hardwood twice, impatient.
She gazes up at him, nibbling her bottom lip in contemplation. Then, she bows her head and mumbles, “The Inuyasha ending.”
Sasuke truly has no words.
“Okay, so like, Ino hates it because Kagome deserved better and okay, I agree, fine, if Inuyasha had actively chosen Kagome over Kikyo even once I would be more satisfied, too, but at the end of the day, Kagome loves him no matter what so I don’t know why she is so aggressive and upset about the ending, I mean, at least it was happy, right? It was the logical fairytale conclusion to the feudal fairytale the manga was marketed as. And why is Inuyasha’s love for Kikyo somehow supposed to negate all of his love for Kagome, anyway? He loves Kikyo and he loves Kagome; why do those facts have to be mutually exclusive? Why should we look down at Kagome’s choice to return to the past, why--”
“Sakura.” He interrupts her rant before she flies into a frenzy, as she does whenever she talks about medicine, fitness, the judgmental nurse who gives her dirty looks at Cardio, and of course, popular anime.
His girlfriend takes a minute to collect herself, practicing breathing exercises she’d picked up in a yoga class. Catching the smirk that Sasuke's unable to suppress, she snaps, “Don’t judge me!”
He leans over, tapping the center of her forehead, playful. “Don’t you have better things to do with your time than obsess over fictional characters?”
Sakura grows bright red. Then, as the color of her skin settles back on its normal shade, a look of epiphany settles, too. “Oh,” she says pleasantly, “I get it.”
“Get what?” Sasuke tugs on the end of her ponytail.
Sakura opens the drawer again to load the rest of her belongings in. Then, she winks at him. “You’re a Kikyo fanboy.”
“I’m what?”
The surgeon examines him clinically, as if about to diagnose a patient. “Look, you’re a man nearing your late twenties, stoic, successful, handsome. You fit the quintessential Kikyo fanboy demographic. It’s okay, embrace it.”
He scoffs. “Tch, whatever. Don’t let Naruto hear you.”
Sakura closes the drawer, now uniquely hers, with an air of finality. Her stay extends indefinitely from a weekend to a week to a month. Six months later, Sasuke wakes to a familiar conversation in the kitchen as his girlfriend prepares breakfast for the apartment.
“But don’t you think Koga was so much cooler than Inuyasha? He should have ended up with Kagome, dattebayo!”
“They’re happily married in canon, Naruto--” she aggressively tosses the eggs onto his best friend’s plate-- “grow up.”
“Isn’t Kagome dead in the seq--”
“That’s not confirmed.”
“I mean, didn’t the article say her daughter doesn’t know much about her parents, because she’s lived alone from a young age?”
Sasuke slides into the chair beside Naruto, grabbing an apple slice and popping it into his mouth. “Losing battle, dead-last.”
The blond rubs at the growing stubble on his chin in exasperation. “When did she move in, anyway?”
Waving the frying pan dangerously in the blond’s direction, Sakura makes a sour face. Then, the doctor turns to Sasuke with an apologetic expression. “I guess you’re stuck with me, huh, Sasuke-kun?”
Sasuke looks at her quietly, mouth dry. He wants to reach over to her and wipe the sleep from her eyes; maybe, even, he wants to let his hands linger, then wander across her clavicle. Stuck isn’t the right word, he wants to tell her. With her, he’s never stuck, but…
“Nah, Sakura-chan, stuck is like Kagome in the feudal era!” Naruto’s crass voice interjects. As his best friend revels in his famous last words, Sasuke only observes as Sakura meanders over to him and cracks an egg open on his head. Maybe, he thinks, watching bits of egg shell fly onto the floor and gelatinous orange yolk drip down Naruto’s nose, he needs to find better roommates.
But Naruto wraps his arms around his ribcage from laughing too hard and Sakura cleans up the mess and makes them tea from burnt rice and Sasuke thinks again. “Not stuck,” he tells Sakura in the evening, when the morning incident is long forgotten. “Once the thread of fate is tangled, it cannot be undone.”*
She peers up at him from beneath their blanket and sighs. “I knew it!” Sakura shakes her hair loose, tucking the loose locks into the collar of her t-shirt. “You think in another universe, we’re star-crossed lovers?”
The Uchiha snorts. “I hope not.”
“Well, it’s whatever,” she says with a small yawn, “I know what I’d do.”
He sinks into bed beside her, cradling her head delicately with his arm. “And what’s that?”
Sakura beams. “I’d choose love, every time.”
“Isn’t that the wrong wish?”* Sasuke chides, memorizing the lines of her smile.
“It’s not nice to mock your girlfriend.” The surgeon buries her face in his chest. “Read the official databooks and then we can talk.”
“What?”
“I said what I said.”