Chapter Text
Waking up in an unfamiliar place always unnerved Sakura. This was perhaps exacerbated by the fact that it happened most often when she was on a mission when everyone was on high alert at all times. This time she was safe in Konoha, but in a bed that was not her own. There was an arm slung over her body that settled on her stomach in a lazy sort of way. The arm, as well as the bed, belonged to Shisui, with who, up until about 10 hours ago she enjoyed a very uncomplicated friendship.
Shisui was an ‘I love you’ friend, in the sense that he was one of three of her friends who she said ‘I love you’ to platonically with the other two being Ino and Naruto. Now she guessed that the trio became a duo because saying ‘I love you’ to a friend and saying it to a friend you’ve just had (admittedly quite good) casual sex with were two very different things.
He was the most fleeting addition to the category. They became close during an Anbu mission during which she saved his life and he repaid the favour by becoming a perpetual sounding board and advisor for her relationship problems, first with Sasuke and then all the men she tried to (unsuccessfully) replace him with after their break up.
Unfortunately for Sakura, there wasn’t really a manual for when a relationship you have been romanticising your whole life breaks down slowly and painfully and then all at once. In a way, it was a good thing that Sasuke broke it off with her. If she was being honest with herself, she wasn’t sure she would have found it in herself to end it, even though she wasn’t happy.
Once upon a time, loving Sasuke made her feel like her heart was going to melt out of her chest. It was a cyclone that took away her breath and left no portion of her skin without sensation. No wonder she could only feel it for so long before being completely consumed by it. Sasuke, on the other hand, was not prone to feeling things this strongly. His affection was lukewarm, his touches were scarce. Sakura thought that maybe her love would be enough for both of them but that was a delusion in the end.
“I don’t think I can give you what you want,” said Sasuke to her the evening they ended things as he poked at the now-cold dinner with his chopsticks. He wasn’t wrong but it did not stop Sakura from giving him all the excuses she could think of to try and make him change his mind. But Sasuke wasn’t someone whose mind could be easily swayed, she knew that much.
The aftermath wasn’t pretty by any means. Sakura could barely remember a time when she did not have feelings for Sasuke. Loving him consumed her so wholeheartedly, losing him splintered her into a million pieces. She was simultaneously scared of never feeling this level of emotion and even more terrified of entrusting so much of herself to another person again.
Unsurprisingly, Sakura’s subsequent dating life felt underwhelming. Her work at the hospital left little time to gamble on attraction to strangers. Ino encouraged her to ‘give people a chance’ which led Sakura to a few second and third dates but in the end, they all fizzled out for one reason or another.
She still found herself craving affection, but none of it felt rewarding without a genuine emotional bond build on trust and respect which is how she ended up with Shisui breathing softly and pulling her closer as he saw what was probably his 8th dream of the night. Sakura was perfectly familiar with good sex. Sasuke was a good lover but she had always suspected that this was more to do with Sasuke disliking being bad at anything, and less to do with his desire to make her feel good. That theory was reinforced every time Sasuke rolled over and fell asleep immediately after they finished, always with his back to her. Although she acknowledged that he didn’t by any means owe her any form of physical or emotional intimacy, it still hurt that they were less compatible in reality than they were in her head.
Catching herself on another thought of her ex-partner, Sakura felt guilty because of who she was with then and there. It wasn’t like Shisui could hear her thoughts, but he was the one that liked to remind her to not compare every single man she met to Sasuke. With their family resemblance, it wouldn’t be hard for her to pretend that it was another Uchiha entirely with his arm around her, but she loved Shisui as a friend too much to do him the disservice. The warmth that she felt from the physical proximity felt almost dangerous because it felt like something she could get used to.
The sexual tension wasn’t always there. For most of their acquaintance, he was his perfectly friendly and charming self but he was not flirty in the same way as he was with quite a few women in the village. He was actually surprisingly serious any time she came to him for advice about Sasuke or the other men she dated. It all changed on one particularly melancholy evening when Sakura’s frustration with other men in Konoha hit a breaking point.
“You know, if you just need to let off some steam, I am always here to lend a helping hand,” he said, coupled with that smile that she was sure had sealed the deal for him plenty of times.
Initially, she dismissed it as a joke and banished the entire idea to the back of her mind but as time went on the possibility of it kept slipping through the cracks of her consciousness.
She could almost call the decision-making process that went into her current situation clinical. It took into account multiple variables and assessed the level of risk before finally reaching a conclusion. The risk was, of course, losing Shisui as a friend. She practically developed a formula for herself. The friendship would be most at risk if either party got hurt which roughly translated to one of them developing unrequited feelings for the other, so by minimising this chance you lower the risk to the friendship.
Ino had looked at her like she was crazy when Sakura was presenting this case to her best friend a few days prior. The blonde kunoichi’s stance that one shouldn’t really sleep with your closest friends clashed with her desire to see her friend get some action and stop complaining about Konoha’s dating pool.
“See, because Shisui’s chance of becoming romantically interested in me are virtually zero, I only have my own feelings to worry about and I think can handle myself,” explained Sakura firmly.
“And what makes you so certain that there is no way he will start liking you for real?” Ino asked with an accusative tone she liked to employ when she thought Sakura was disrespecting herself.
“Well, if you think about it, in the given context I am perfectly replaceable for him, and before you come at me, I don’t see it as a bad thing. He has never shown romantic interest in me before and we are talking about casual sex here, which he can get elsewhere if I am no longer an option.”
“What about you though. Is he replaceable for you?”
It was a good point, and in a way, Sakura couldn’t just substitute someone else into Shisui’s position right at that very moment. She held a great deal of platonic love for him mixed with just the right amount of sexual chemistry to make it a possibility. She was on her way to being happily single and making decisions with herself, and not someone else, in mind. This was just another one of those decisions that had the potential to be good for her and without consequences.
“What are you thinking so hard about?” He asked sleepily, bringing her out of the abyss of overthinking.
“Nothing, just hospital stuff,” she lied.
“Ah, do you have to leave for your shift?”
“No, I am only expected at noon,” she replied.
“Good, that means you can stay a bit longer.”
He pulled her closer towards his chest and planted a soft kiss on the back of her shoulder.
Kami-sama, she hoped she wasn’t in trouble.