#not so subtle digs at haas run in the family :)

[russellradio]

“Mick’s problem was that his fellow team member in his first year couldn’t compete with him. Both were rookies and he dominated Mazepin, he was no benchmark to him. In his second year, with Kevin Magnussen he had a stronger driver as his colleague. Under those circumstances, Haas didn’t give him enough room to grow. Now at Mercedes he can take time and learn everything he wants to learn. I hope that he gets another chance. If he does, I’m sure he can win them over.”

Mick’s cousin David Schumacher on his current situation

[lazylazyhowl]

foment (of snakes and cherry blossom)

foment (verb) – to stir public opinion; to incite rebellion

["Only time will tell, so I think I'll stay a bit longer." Sasuke and Sakura get married, and the world makes their wedding its business.]

AO3 Link

Written for SasuSakuTwitFest Day 6.

Prompt: Marriage x "Idiot, we're married." x Sasuke catches Sakura.

All 3 used, loosely.

―

Twenty-five years old-

The ornaments in her hair tickle her cheek and wake her from thoughts as the car slows to a stop. Without a second wasted, the door opens and the roof simultaneously lifts and reveals her to the chilly outside.

Sakura squints beneath the wataboshi and takes in the imposing torii gate, vibrantly red, the white sunlight that lands upon it, glitters on even whiter snow.

Her breath frosts. She takes the black-gloved hand that is offered in assistance and steps out of the car.

The heavy shiromuku spills all around her, layers and layers of woven fabric and intricate embroideries that blend seamlessly into the ground. She feels, rather than sees, the presence of the surrounding crowd.

Sasuke stands just a few steps away, in some hushed conversation with Kakashi.

He reminds Sakura of a picturesque ink painting. Their eyes met as she approaches, and she flushes under the fine powder on her cheeks. The dark silk of his haori has nothing, she thinks, on the depthlessness of his eyes.

Under the steady weight of his stare, the jitters beneath her obi settle. She holds her head infinitesimally taller and returns his smile.

(She might just drown if she stares too long.)

.

Her own gait is unfamiliar with the clunky pair of high heels, and the trailing robes hinders, but she keeps pace with him without struggle.

His and her ceremony, every bit meant to be a private affair, made headlines a full week before the day of.

There isn’t much to the procession when neither of them has any blood family left to speak of.

But as they walk on the stone-paved path that ducks beneath a vault of wintry branches and leads deeper into the shrine, out of sight his bodyguards and the local authorities are keeping an eye out for uninvited guests.

There is no wonder that the media shakes with excitement as it makes a debate out of this wedding. The last living Uchiha and heir to an enormous fortune finally settles down, and his bride is a clanless, meritless girl from the shadier side of the city.

Sakura supposes from an outsider’s view it’s either serendipitous love or a gold-digging scheme. Either interpretation is halfway condescending in her opinion.

The priest asks the gods for their happiness after the cleansing ceremony. She bows and solemnly accepts the blessing. (A voice in the back of her head tells her to hide, twist further into this deceptive white shroud because she can scrub the very skin off her flesh and still not be rid of stains.)

The sake is well-aged and has a subtle touch of apple and steamed rice. Three cups and nine sips later, they made their vows

“Until death, Sakura.” The oath is careful and quiet, but also sure. His beautiful fingers graze her callused ones and squeeze the pink-painted tips.

It’s unapologetically Sasuke to be so few of words. But what he says, he means; and in that helplessly forward way it is heartfelt. She holds his unwavering gaze and smiles.

“‘til death, Sasuke-kun.”

They bow once more to the overseeing gods. From this moment forth, she is Uchiha Sakura.

.

She changes into a hikifurisode with blooming myrtles cascading down its tail, the uchiwa ripples at the end of long, sweeping sleeves.

“My best wishes to the groom and bride,” Tobirama, immaculately dressed in a suit and tie, tells them over a raised cup of sake, his eyes dark and glinting, and amicable crow feet.

Sakura stands a little closer to Sasuke. The Senju elder couldn’t have been any more displeased by this turn of events.

Those who support their marriage can probably be counted on one hand, but the reception is still a big splash with all the prominent faces congregating at the Uchiha compound. All headache-inducing politics, but there’s copious food and sake to make it up.

Sasuke has an easy smirk on his face as noisy cheers erupt around them. Up until yesterday, he was still scowling, his foot tapping something furious underneath the kitchen table, as Kakashi prepped him for the social side of the gathering.

It doesn’t take very long for him to be pulled away from Sakura’s side for conversations beyond the scope of the occasion, and she’s left to entertain the other guests.

“Sakura-san, you and the Uchiha brat. Who would’ve thought?” Mei says with a grin and a half that Sakura can’t help reciprocate.

“Give or take, at least half of Konoha people, Mizukage-sama.”

“Don’t be a stranger now, hmm?” Mei gives her an inquisitive head tilt, and Sakura falters. (She’s never sure where she stands with others anymore, after everything, and now bearing the Uchiha name.) Thankfully, she never has to come up with a response when the Mizukage simply goes on.

“You know how gossip media is all over the place.” Mei wrinkles her nose and twists her brightly painted lips. “I could do without. It’s hard enough dating at my age. I say, the random person on the street can be more critical than my own parents now. Just because I also happen to lead them, haa...”

Sakura laughs a little more genuinely. “Sounds like peace, Mei-san.”

Mei’s chuckles fade into a forlorn sigh as she cradles her cheek. “Oh, I hear that, I do. What a time to be alive. Or Kage. Poor old Tobirama, really.” She shrugs and trails off for a moment before looking back to Sakura.

“Regardless of what happens from now on, I’m glad you two found each other, Sakura-san.” Mei holds up her sake. “To your union.”

Their cups tap with a small clink.

.

 Perhaps with you at his side, something will change.

 .

All things considered, Sakura hasn’t expected to receive much honest well-wishing, and she didn’t. That one such wish came from a figure holding as much stake as the Mizukage took her by surprise. Then again, Mei has always been a romantic at heart, Sakura just forgot that, like she has forgotten other things.

Maybe one day she’ll even forget how to heal.

“Be happy, Sakura-chan.” Here’s another honest wish, even though Naruto’s eyes look so sad as he says it. He’s arrived late from work, still in the sooty grey jacket of his Anbu uniform but distinctly more groomed and polished than he is often known for.

“Promise me.” He insists.

Guilt hasn’t been something she associates with Naruto for a while now. They’ve been at this for long enough to know what he wants and what she wants don’t align. He hasn’t met his match, is all; she is no loss to cry over. But tonight, the gnawing returns as she tells him.

“I promise.”

The way he grins without reserve, the whisker-like marks on his cheeks, it overlaps with a million other times in the past that he’s smiled at her.

She’s promised the same before the gods too, but this promise rings differently. It’s personal—raw. Real, rather than surreal.

When Sasuke reappears beside her, Naruto wastes no time to raise his voice.

“How could you go and leave Sakura-chan all alone like this, huh? Bastard! Tch, not even half a day’s gone by and already disrespecting the sacred vow.” Naruto shakes his head in dramatic disapproval.

“She and I married, captain. It’s not as if we became conjoined.” At Sasuke’s dry tone, Naruto throws his head back and cackles uncontrollably, much to her husband’s puzzlement. Sakura smiles into her sip of sake.

(Her husband. Husband. She keeps testing the words in her head and they’re more agreeable than the last time.)

“Whatever, don’t you ever break her heart, you hear me?”

Sasuke gives her a sidelong, searching look, and she can see the words being weighted behind his eyes.

“I don’t believe I can,” he says, light smile on his lips, before wincing in annoyance at Naruto’s hearty shoulder slaps.

.

In the ebbing hours of the wedding, she quietly leads Sasuke away from the celebration. His people—hers too now, she supposes—can take care of the rest.

Even when he maintains his stilly decorum, she can tell he’s already drunk near out of his mind, that he keeps his eyes on the ground just to walk straight, his hand clinging onto hers rather painfully. He didn’t even have much to drink, only the conversational shots exchanged between dialogues.

They end up in the lamplit garden, where the sound of running water and crisp snap of the shishi-odoshi fill the silence between them.

Snow crunches beneath their feet. The night air smells silvery compared to a stuffy, crowded dining hall.

“Oi...”

Sasuke tugs on her hand that he still hasn’t let go of, to turn her to him; he’s closer than she expected. The shadows flicker across the straight bridge of his nose and smooth, flawless skin. She can see the fine little white hair on his cheekbone as his face draws even nearer, his eyes dark, darker than this moonless night.

Their noses brush lightly, tentatively that it’s sweet, that her heart quickens. Their combined breaths drift away from between them, and she can taste alcohol on the warm, heady air. Even up close he doesn’t look all that wasted, with that sheen of clarity in his eyes, or maybe she’s pretty tipsy herself.

She closes her eyes, closes the last few millimeters between their lips. A quick, chaste kiss. And another. His lips are softer than you’d expect. Without disentangling their fingers, he brings his other hand up to angle against her jaw, neither rough nor gentle. Just firm, and it’s anchoring.

There’s the sound of a shutter going off, instantly muffled by a clear tap of the shishi-odoshi.

She licks the tang of apple sake from his lips. (Maybe…drowning wouldn’t be all that bad an ending.)

.

.

.

Sasuke wakes up dry-mouthed and to a nasty pounding in his head. The chill in the room hits his naked skin the next moment, and he curls up inside the futon.

His vision is blurry, his extremities weak. He bites down on another groan and brings a shaky hand to his head. If he didn’t already know misery, he’d say this is it and it is never, ever happening a second time.

Now it occurs to him that someone other than him has laid out the futon. He buries his face into the pillow, eyes squeezed shut, a suffering groan, and stench of alcohol on his tongue. There is no recollection as to how he’s even made it to the bedroom.

What he does remember is Naruto’s dumb face, a look of loss braved by loud guffaws and half-jokes that were completely serious. Advice unasked for is no different from spit in the face.

Who does Naruto think he is, anyway, prying into her and Sasuke’s business? (And that’s what it is: business)

The angle of the light on the tatami tells him it’s still morning, a little later than he normally wakes. After a small battle with the heavy blanket, it takes him a few more minutes to gather his bearings to pull on a kimono and make his way to the kitchen.

Out in the living area, he finds Sakura slumped over by the coffee table with a small army of sake cans standing watch at her side. A blanket is draped snuggly over her shoulders.

He slides the door shut behind him, more discreet than when he’s opened it.

“Nn, good morning, Sasuke-kun.”

He pauses mid pouring a glass of water and meets her gaze that’s half-hidden behind mussed pink locks.

“Maybe.”

She giggles into her arms she uses as makeshift pillows. He takes immediate aversion to the bubbly mood, and though he doesn’t think he’s letting it show, she seems to pick up on it anyway and grins a little wider.

“Take that with your water then.” He follows her finger (small, he remembers; lightly rough to the touch) to a plastic bag perching near the edge of the table that he’s assumed was just more sake. “Medicine. I asked Lee to get it since I figured you’d be in need. He told me I was most youthful.” She giggles again in some private joke.

Sasuke sits down across from her, their socked feet touching in the small space beneath the table. He’s careful not to knock over the empty cans, pushed haphazardly toward his side of the table to allow Sakura the rest of the surface, and rummages through the bag’s content.

The medicine is hidden underneath several unopened sake cans, a small tube with bright labeling that he brings up to the light for examination. Not that he has any expertise in this branch of products to judge.

“Save some for me.”

“Hn.”

He drops two tablets into the water according to the fine prints and watches them dissolve into clear white foam.

Sakura is still sprawled out on the table and playing with one of the cans. The sun rays seep through the kitchen window and settle on her face to deepen those greener shards in her eyes. There’s a light flush to her cheeks, knots and tangles in her hair that she hasn’t bothered undoing; some pink strands sticking to the side of her face as she returns his watchful gaze.

“Did you see the news?” When he remains silent, Sakura produces the phone he’s recently given her, already decorated with all manners of animal stickers, and shows him the screen after a few quick taps.

He squints to see a picture of them from last night, wedding garbs and all, caught in the middle of what appears to be a kiss.

It was. He recalls now, doing something like that upon sensing the paparazzi, how she’s been the one to lean in at the end. And the velvety taste of lipstick at the tip of his tongue. Without the haze of alcohol, it doesn’t seem as good an idea anymore.

(At least, he thinks, that’s a well-taken picture.)

“They’re writing up a storm on us.” She takes the phone back to scroll down a few times. “You should see the comment section.”

“I’m fine.”

“Oh.” Her smile fades. Her hand, with the phone, retreats inside the blanket cocoon, and she drops to her cheek on the table. “It was my first kiss, you know,” she says after a bit.

He stares at the top of her head. Her tone is light as far as he can tell, but his instincts tell him to apologize. And he does, even if he doesn’t mean it.

“No.” She sighs. “No. It’s not like I was particularly saving it. There was just no good timing.”

“I see.” He picks up the glass and downs it in one breath and puts it back down none-too-graciously. Fruity, like melon. Maybe apple.

“You know, I’ve always had it in my head—nothing specific, just somewhere in the back, the idea that I’d marry someone I love. I mean, who else does the common person marry, anyway?”

“You’re not the common person, Sakura.” This he can say with certainty. Sasuke has no use for the common and run-of-the-mill.

She doesn’t take it as a compliment as he intended. She shifts to rest her chin on her arms, staring up at him unimpressed. “No, I guess not,” she says. “So, poison is no big deal, but it’s alcohol that gets you.”

“I suppose.” He rubs at the bridge of his nose, feeling strangely on edge.

“Stay away from it from now, you’re a boorish drunk.”

“Aa, I can say the same for you.”

Sasuke doesn’t mean to sound annoyed, never mind that he is. He’s usually more tolerant, a little more scrupulous even if not patient. (He’s still not equipped to deal with this on a good day.) Her foot moves away from his as she draws her knees to her chest and tucks herself further into her cocoon.

Lee. Lee’s fault for even buying this obscene amount of alcohol on top of the hangover medicine as if they weren’t irony in a bag. Was it because Sakura also has a say in the house now?

As the silence stretches between them, he sighs. “Look-”

“How are you feeling?” She grabs one of the cans nearer to her and tips it against her lips for a sip.

He takes the out she’s offering. “Aa, better.” And in retrospect, like an idiot, for losing his temper over something so trivial. The hangover, he supposes.

“Shishō always said that brand worked faster than the rest.”

“I can’t say I’m impressed she was able to draw that conclusion.”

Sakura laughs at that, a belly-laugh of when you find something genuinely funny, and he can’t help but wonder if this is actually her default. This airy personality that’s prone to smiles and giggles, that takes his words and doesn’t dissect them for more than face value. More girl than woman.

And he wonders, where she disappears to on the days Sakura isn’t drunk. Or if it’s just him that hasn’t experienced her before.

Compared to the usual Sakura, with the guarded melancholy and a guilt complex, this one is vastly different, and he’s not sure how to use this information just yet.

Her laughter subsides and her smile fades by a shade. “I tried turning to alcohol before, too you know, but couldn’t make it work quite like shishō.”

Making alcohol work is an oxymoron unless you’re Lee and in combat, and even that is a wild card as far as Sasuke is concerned. But he stays his tongue. She doesn’t intend to rely on alcohol, and that’s good enough for him. It’s not his place to change her opinion on anything.

“If I’m this much of a mess right now…I can’t imagine how much she’s seen, at her age. Oh, but don’t tell her I said that,” she says with a little laugh as if he’s going to be picking up the phone to call Tsunade Senju for a friendly chat in the near future. “Shishō’s strong.”

“Hn, so are you.”

Sakura takes another sip before placing the sake down with a soft clink. “I’m going to wash my face,” she announces and shimmies out of her cocoon, oddly reminiscent of his recent struggle with the futon. When she stands and knocks her knee into the table, sending the several empty cans clattering onto the floor, Sasuke rises as well and walks around the table to her side.

“Sorry…”

“It’s fine.”

“I’ll get that.” But she missteps and places her foot onto one of the rolling cans. From the way her limbs are completely relaxed as she falls backward, she would have hit her head on the floor if he wasn’t already behind her.

He steadies her with an arm around her shoulders. Sakura turns her head and gives him a blank stare that tells him she’s not all there. Near putty against his chest, and smells strongly of sake, just like last night.

“Sorry,” she says after a bit.

“Don’t do this anymore, it’s unbecoming.”

She smiles. “Of Uchiha?”

“Of you.”

Her smile dims again; she gestures to the cans. “Just leave it. I’ll clean up later.”

“I’ll do it. You already cleaned up after me last night.”

“No, I-”

“Sakura, I’ll do it.” He squeezes her shoulder and attempts his best reassuring tone. “Go get a bath instead, you stink of sake.”

She pushes away and rounds on him with a frown and huff. “Well hello, pot.”

“I’ll go after you.”

“Hmph.” She turns to leave.

As she opens the door, he calls after her. “If.” She looks over her shoulder at him. “If it helps, that was also my first kiss.”

Sakura blinks a few times, then laughs. “Not in the least. But it’s pretty funny that you think it would, Sasuke-kun.”

Is it? An eye for an eye; one first kiss for another. It makes sense in his mind, as it must in hers as well, even if she laughs about it. (Or does she laugh at it?)

“We’re married, silly. Let’s not keep scores, okay?”

With one last giggle, the door slides shut and he’s left in the kitchen by himself.

He clears the cans away and rolls up the blanket she’s left behind, he thinks about the sobering sound of shishi-odoshi and the night air nipping at his nose and cheeks; and waking up alone with the futon laid out just where he prefers. He thinks about bittersweet apple sake and compares it to the melon candy taste of the medicine on his tongue.

Her look of surprise and doubt when he asked for her hand. That moment when her hanko presses firmly next to where his own seal was still drying.

After making sure everything is in order, Sasuke takes the blanket back to the bedroom.

So, she doesn’t wish to keep scores.

He’ll give that some more thought and decide what to with it later.