#sakuraspagesdrabbles

[sakuraspages]

Sasusaku snippet #1

[Sasuke in Naruto's office, late at night, a month after coming back from Redaku]

"I need arrangements for the next mission," Sasuke says, and he looks unusually nervous.

It's not like Sasuke to be worried when asking for a favor, especially when he asks Naruto. He usually doesn't even ask and does whatever he wants and lets the Hokage’s office deal with the consequences. But this time he seems concerned, and Naruto listens carefully.

"I don't want to be away for several months at a time anymore," Sasuke says. "A few weeks maximum. And I'll need to be off next July."

Naruto blinks. Sasuke never asks for time off. Over the past decade he has accumulated a year's worth of paid vacation, and he didn't seem to even be aware they existed.

"Are you ok?" Naruto asks with a worried frown. "What's going on?..."

Sasuke nods. To Naruto's surprise, he smiles slightly. "Yeah… Sakura's pregnant."

Naruto blanks for several seconds. "What- Right now?"

"Yeah."

"Is it yours?"

Sasuke rolls his eyes. "Obviously."

Naruto smiles but he shakes his head. "Is that what you were doing in Redaku? I was here dying and you guys were being horny like teenagers instead of working?"

Sasuke doesn't reply. It was thrilling to spend time with Sakura away from the village and work together again. He did love how close they became again, even if they apparently got slightly too close. He has no regrets.

"How's Sakura?" Naruto asks.

"She's fine. We're happy about it. But I don't want to be away as much as I was for Sarada."

Naruto nods and leans back in his chair. "Aaah I'm so happy for you guys! I can't believe you're gonna do diapers again though, I'm so over it, you know."

"Don't tell anyone yet, Sakura wants to wait before we tell everyone."

"Oh no! You know I'm terrible at keeping secrets!"

"I can't believe you're still Hokage."

"Shikamaru keeps all the secrets, he doesn't tell me anything."

"That's even worse."

[sakuraspages]

Sasusaku snippet #3

[Misunderstanding]

"Sakura."

"Hm?""

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing?"

He shakes his head. "You've been… Like this since we came back. What's going on?"

Sakura has been distant. While they were in Redaku they got closer and shared lots of intimate moments, but now that they are back in Konoha, Sakura has been busy and has kept avoiding him. She always seems distracted, concerned, and lost in thoughts, to the point he begins to wonder if she is feeling unwell or if she might be falling out of love.

To his surprise, Sakura breaks down into tears in front of him. "I'm pregnant," she sobs.

His heart swells in his chest. He wasn't expecting this at all but looking back, they weren't very careful when seeing each other in Redaku and he can't be completely surprised. He is both relieved to know why Sakura was acting strange, and worried to see her so sad at the news.

He comes to hug her. "Why are you crying?"

"I'm sad that we won't keep it."

He blinks. He must be missing something. "Why?"

Sakura shakes in his embrace as she wipes the tears on her cheeks with her fingers. "Because you don't want to."

He clearly is missing some info. "Why would I not want to?" he asks in disbelief.

Sakura gives a weak shrug. "It's been so long since Sarada, and everyone is done with diapers and bottles, and you never talked about wanting another baby…"

"I didn't want you to be alone at home with two young kids, but now it's different."

Sakura looks up with a loud sniffle. "Is it?"

"Obviously! Sarada's grown up, and I'm in the village more often… Are you not happy about it?"

"I am, but you…"

"I am too."

Sakura cries even harder and he doesn't know if she's happy or she's sad.

He brushes her hair away from her face. "Why are you crying?"

She gives him a wet smile. "We're having a baby."

[sakuraspages]

Sasusaku snippet #4

[Homeschooled-suke]

"Naruto is traumatized because Hinata made him attend the labor and delivery class at the hospital. He said he's glad he'll never have to give birth to the tailed beast inside him."

Naruto has always had a tendency to overshare private information, but now that his wife is pregnant, Sasuke can't go a day without hearing about bodily functions he'd rather have ingored.

Sakura chuckles and holds her round belly.

"Oh no don't make me laugh, I'm gonna pee myself," she says quickly. Her own pregnancy is already quite far along and it's unclear who of Hinata or Sakura will give birth first.

There is a short silence between them. When Sasuke speaks again his voice is much quieter. "Are you disappointed that I don't do these things with you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the pregnancy classes and all."

Sakura shrugs slightly. "I didn't expect it from you. We do things differently. It's fine."

Sasuke doesn't seem convinced. "Is it?"

"If it makes you feel better, I don't go to the classes anyway, I usually give them."

It is true that it would make little sense for him to attend a classe when Sakura already give him all the info directly.

"You're already a pro," he says with a smile.

Sakura nods. "Do you want me to teach you how babies are made?"

He eyes her baby bump. "Apparently we both already know that..."

Sakura raises her eyebrows and fakes a pout as she moves away from him. "Oh ok then."

He pulls her back and kisses her. "I'll retake the class."

[sakuraspages]

sasusaku snippet #5

[More Uchihas]

"You look like someone died." 

Naruto is looking at him with concern. Sasuke keeps looking out the window of the Hokage’s office. It's late at night. It's been three months since he and Sakura came back from Redaku.

"No, it's the contrary," he says slowly.

Naruto straightens up in his seat. "Oh no, did you edo tensei someone? Seriously I can't cover your shit all the time–" 

"It's twins."

"What–"

"You know Sakura is pregnant?"

"Yeah?"

"She's pregnant with twins."

Naruto blanks but when he sees that Sasuke is serious, and most importantly, already defeated, he laughs out loud.

"Sooo I take it I'll write you down for extended paternity leave?" 

"Sakura says the chance of twins is higher if the woman is older." 

"You have more kids than me now! Wait, should I make one more to catch up? I'll talk to Hinata..."

Sasuke shakes his head and walks across the room. "How can I take care of two babies at once? I only have one arm?" 

"I've offered you a prosthetis multiple times." 

"It's not the problem." He keeps pacing in the office. "A baby twelve years after the first was already a lot, but two…" 

"What did Sakura say?"

"Oh, she's over the moon. She keeps saying we'll be fine. She overestimates what I can do."

"You're in the village now. You can be with Sakura and take one baby each."

"I don't know…" 

"Sakura and you, you've been through everything. You can do this together. And maybe after all the bad things, now you get twice as much happiness." 

Sasuke sighs. Maybe Naruto is right. Maybe it's a good thing. He thinks about how happy Sakura has been since the ultrasound showed two babies. He loves to see her so radiant. He smiles for himself. "Maybe."

"Also twice the diapers," Naruto adds. "How do you even change a diaper with one arm?"

[sakuraspages]

Sasusaku snippet #2

[Sakura, 9000 months pregnant with Sarada, convinces Sasuke to go on a walk in the village to stretch her tired legs]

The afternoon is sunny and they walk for a while before Sakura realizes she has never been in this part of the village. She doesn't recognize this side of the lake or the forest. It's a beautiful place, with wild flowers in the tall grass and a pontoon on the lake. There's green algea on the wood and the sand by the water is untouched. It's clear no one has been here in a while.

She looks around and notices that they are alone.  "It's so quiet… It's like it's only us," she says. 

Sasuke nods. "It's a private property."

Sakura blinks. "Really? Should we be here?" She worries. 

Sasuke points at a large stone that marks the beginning of a path in the forest. Barely visible under the dirt and the moss, a red and white fan is carved.

"Oh…" Sakura understands. They are far into the limits of the old Uchiha district. She gives him a teasing smile. "So… I'm with the landlord?" 

"It used to be our training ground. It's been taken care of by the village now, they use it as a training ground for the ANBU. I had no interest in claiming it back, but… if I wanted to settle down here again… I think Kakashi would let me."

"Do you want to?"

"Our apartment is too small to raise a child, I mean, when she grows up. There's no hurry but... if you wanted a house… It's close enough to the hospital and the academy. The lake is a good place to train." 

Sakura caresses her baby bump and takes his hand. "It's a really nice place."

[sakuraspages]

sasusaku snippet #13

[Mermaid!Sakura AU - #8]

Sakura feels slightly better the next day, and almost normal, if tired, the following day. Sasuke is happy that the antibiotics worked and that Sakura is awake again.

Tsunade's words are still in his mind but it's very easy to forget them when Sakura smiles at him and her green eyes shimmer like the sunset over the sea. He tells himself that he will think about it later, get to know Sakura when she feels better and try to guess what her intentions are in the coming weeks. She surely would already have attempted something against him if she really had malicious plans, wouldn't she?

Now he is happy just to come home after work and see her up and healing. She floods his bathroom a couple more times, he stops trying to ask her not to. She is still too weak to try to walk again but she regains her appetite and is strong enough to talk to him in the evening.

She now happily tells him what her favorite foods are. Naruto asks him about his exorbitant fish market tabs and Sasuke just says he had guests over. She refuses to eat vegetables but she tries chocolate and makes herself queasy eating too much of it at once.

She reads a lot of books from his dusty shelves and asks him about the human things she reads. He could listen to her for hours, watching her put her hair behind her ear and bite her lip as she looks over a page to read a sentence to him.

At the end of her first week since he found her, she welcomes him home with an unusually suspicious attitude. She moves to the farthest side of the bed when he enters the room and he wonders what changed since the day before, when she was eager to nestle against his chest to be carried to the bathtub.

“Are you ok?...” he asks.

“I know why you're squishy down there,” she says with an accusatory glare at his pants.

His confusion deepens. “... What?”

She waves a book in front of her. “It says everything in there! It says the things males of your species do to females!”

“What book is that–”

He squints at the cover when she stops shaking the book and he understands. It’s the last volume of Icha Icha Paradise, which Kakashi gifted him a few years ago and he was using to wedge his headboard into place.

“How did you find that?” he asks.

“I read all your other books. I do not want you to… to…” she says as she leaves through the pages to find her words, “'thrust your hot flesh sword into my tight moist tunnel'!” she reads.

Part of him wants to laugh but she seems to be genuinely upset and he honestly cannot blame her for distrusting men after reading this rag of a romance novel.

“Noted,” he says calmly. “I'm not sure you should read this book it's not really–”

“You will not convince me with flowers or jewelry!” she adds like she fears it was his next move.

He shakes his head slowly. “I won't try to. It's not a good book, it doesn't show real relationships, it–”

“If you do, I will crush your squishy parts like a crab claw!” she threatens.

He can feel his privates flinch at this thought. “I'd like to avoid that.”

For a long moment she looks at him like she’s trying to judge him. “Really?”

“Sakura, I won't do anything you don't want me to do. I'll stop carrying you around if you don't want me to touch you.”

She seems confused when she realizes she might just have stopped him from doing her favorite thing. “I still want you to carry me in your arms. But I don't want you near my…” she leaves through the book again and reads a sentence, “my 'sensitive love cave'!”

“I will not touch you anywhere you don't want me to but please stop quoting this book.”

“What about when the mating season comes?” she asks with squinted eyes. “You won't try to mate with me if I'm the only female around?”

“No?”

She finally seems to relax. “... Ok.”

“When is mating season?...” he dares to ask.

“Some time next month.”

“So you… You want to go back to the sea to find a mate?”

"No. I just lay my eggs somewhere then I leave. None of these disgusting things happens,” she says as she waves Icha Icha Paradise again.

“You lay eggs,” he repeats, trying not to sound too surprised.

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Not many. Five or ten thousand usually.”

“Cool.” This will be a problem.

“When is mating season for you?” she asks.

“We don’t have that. We do it whenever we want, I mean when both people want to do it.”

“Well, I don’t want to," she says, "so keep your…” another glance at the book, “ ...'velvety love stick' away from me.”

He can’t help a loud sigh as he curses Kakashi for gifting him this.

“Give me this book, I’ll burn it.”

[sakuraspages]

sasusaku snippet #7

[Mermaid!Sakura AU – #2]

She looks awfully weak and her breathing sounds rough and painful. She gapes at him like a fish out of water. She moves her hand slowly. Her fingers are long and white and her nails short but shiny like pearls.

She shakily gestures toward her throat.

“Are you thirsty?” he asks.

She nods slowly. He rushes to give her a glass of water. She fumbles with it and immediately spills it all on her chest.

“No!” he gasps. “Wait– It's ok…” He tries to pat her dry with his cloak and she feebly pushes him away with her hand.

“I'll bring you another glass.”

Less than a minute later, she drops a second full glass on herself. When he brings a third glass, she tries to plunge her full hand into it. His thoughts make no sense.

“You… You want to be in the water?” he tries. She may want to rinse off the sand and the dried salt on her skin. She nods again. He could swear she tried to smile.

He starts a hot bath and comes back to her while the water is running.

“Can you walk?”

Her eyes tell him she probably can't even sit up. He picks her up with the cloak once again. He lowers her into the water but when her toes touch the surface, she squirms and clings on to him.

“Too hot?”

She nods quickly. He gently puts her down on the bath mat and sits her against the bathtub while he adjusts the temperature. He cannot help but notice the strange angle of her legs and feet on the floor. She doesn't seem to control them or use them to sit straight. He briefly considers that she might be paralyzed from the waist down.

“Is this ok?” he asks, and she dips her fingers in the water before quickly removing them. She shakes her head.

The water is almost completely cold when she finally accepts to touch it. With all the care in the world, he lowers her into the bathtub. She sheds the cloak and soon her long hair floats around her in the water.

She gives a loud sigh of relief as she leans back and closes her eyes. For long seconds she doesn't move and he cannot take his eyes off her. There is something uncanny in the way she floats, the subtle movement of her hair, and the light sheen of her skin. Maybe it’s just been a while since he last was with a woman. He realizes he might be intruding on her relaxing moment.

“I'll get you a clean towel,” he says to give her a few minutes.

His brain is so flustered that he needs a long time to remember where he keeps his bath towels.

Of course there's the surprise of finding someone almost dead on the beach, but then there's the fact that this person is an objectively perfect and naked young woman, and also that she looks like she should be treated like a Greek goddess and not at all be soaking in the tiny rusty bathtub of a mentality fragile fisherman in the middle of nowhere. Once she's done with her bath, he will find clothes for her and give her the number of the doctor and she will be on her way. But she looks so weak and tired, and what if she is actually paralyzed? Was she paralyzed before fainting on the beach? Did she have an accident? What could he even help her with anyway, though? No, she should leave, it'd be best for both of them. Maybe he is imagining all of this, after all. It wouldn't be the worst of his dreams for sure. And yet… The feeling of her body when he held her in his arms was so real… He is clearly losing it for good this time. When he comes back he gently knocks at the door of the bathroom. No answer.

“Erm?... Hey?” he calls through the door. ”Can I come in? I have a towel.”

No answer. He worries she might have passed out again and drowned. He pushes the door open and walks in. His bare foot steps in a large puddle of water that has overflowed out of the tub. He lets the towel fall on the wet floor. His eyes are glued to the thing in front of him. A massive fish tail, wider and longer than any fish he has ever caught, is coming out of the bathtub and curling heavily over the edge. It's covered in tiny scales in every possible shade of pink, iridescent with purple and green sparkles in the fluorescent light of his bathroom. At the end of the tail, a fin spreads wider than the tub, still pink but so pale that it looks white. It's thin and translucent, light and flowy, delicate like silk. He feels faint when he notices the blood. A large, crimson gash is open all the way through several rays of the fin, almost down the whole length of it, and drips red-tainted water on his bath mat.

Finally, he manages to take his eyes away from her tail and her wound. When he looks back at her face, her green eyes are open and pleading. For the first time, he hears her speak.

"𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘱?..."

[sakuraspages]

sasusaku snippet #12

[Mermaid!Sakura AU - #7]

“You’d better have a good reason for dragging me here so early,” Tsunade grumbles when he guides her inside his house.

“I do. I just… I need you to be discreet about this…”

“What’s going on?”

“Don’t freak out,” he says as he opens the door to the bathroom and reveals Sakura's whole tail, tiredly resting over the edge of the tub as she lies with her eyes closed barely above the water.

He had considered taking her out of the water and hiding her true nature from the doctor but he feared she might not receive adequate treatment if he hid her wound, and he was too scared that her health would get worse. Tsunade might be old and with a collection of addictions but she has experience and she remains one of the best doctors in the country.

She flinches upon seeing Sakura and takes a small step back, but Sasuke stands between her and the door.

“She's hurt,“ he says. “I think she has an infection. Please help her.”

Tsunade glares at him but he doesn’t budge.

“Please just take a look,” he asks again. Out of duty or out of curiosity, Tsunade slowly walks up to Sakura. After a few seconds of silent shock, she squats to examine her wounded fin.

She gives Sasuke a severe, exasperated glare when she sees the poorly done suture with military thread.

“Does she change when she’s out of the water?” she asks Sasuke.

He nods.

“Can you take her out of the tub?”

He drains the water and wraps Sakura in a towel. She sleepily nestles against his chest when he takes her into his arms.

“She saw me…” she whispers weakly.

He holds her closer. “It’s ok, she won’t tell.”

Tsunade performs a regular medical examination on Sakura in her human form.

“I gave her antibiotics,” she says as she hands Sasuke a small bottle of pills. "Make sure she takes them every day. The fever should go down, but I can't guarantee anything considering… the circumstances.”

She walks out of the bedroom into the main room as if she were leaving but stops before reaching the front door. “How long has she been here?” she asks him seriously, low enough that Sakura can’t hear them.

“Two days.”

“How did you find her?”

“She washed up on the beach. It was very early in the morning.”

“Were you alone?”

“Yes.”

She pauses. She looks like she is worried about something other than Sakura’s health. “She's not good news,” she says with a dark frown. “You should put her back in the sea before she regains all her strength.”

He freezes. Why would he do that? “You just helped her!”

Tsunade frowns even more. She seems mad that he put himself in this situation. “You know what she is,” she says sharply. “They smell desperate sailors from miles away, they seduce them, and they drag them to the bottom.”

He wants to kick Tsunade out of his house. How dare she suggest that Sakura is a monster? “To the bottom of my bathtub?” he says with cold irony.

“This is serious.”

“These are legends.”

“Well your legend is on a week of antibiotics."

He remains silent. Just because one part of the myth is true, doesn’t mean the rest of it is, right?

“Be careful,” Tsunade says before she turns around to leave. It sounds more like a plea than an order.

He calls out of work. He hangs up the phone while his boss is still screaming. He stays by Sakura’s side all day. He pats her forehead with a damp cloth to try and make her fever go down. Her cheeks are still pink with heat. He watches her sleep with concern. He cannot stop thinking about Tsunade’s words. He looks at Sakura’s resting face, her pink lashes brush against her cheekbones, her long hair is messy on his pillow. How could such a beautiful and soft creature be evil? Is it true, did she come for him? Is she here to put him out of his misery?

He catches himself wondering if he really would rather stay on this earth alone with his nightmares than follow her into the abyss. He gently brushes her hair away from her face and a thought comes to his mind and gives him a chill.

What if it’s already too late for him?

[sakuraspages]

sasusaku snippet #11

[Mermaid!Sakura AU - #6]

Sasuke sleeps on the couch. He doesn't have the heart to ask her to give him his bed back. She seems happy with staying home during the day. She grabs the few books he has. She seems curious to read.

When he comes back home after work, he is surprised to hear the shower running. As he walks towards the bathroom, he steps in a puddle of water that’s forming in his bedroom.

He understands when he sees her in the bathtub, with only her tail out of the water, the fin under the shower stream. The tub is overflowing and she’s underwater. He comes closer and looks at her from above. Her hair makes a pink cloud around her.

When he turns the shower off, she smiles at him, and emerges.

“You're back!” she says happily. “Why did you turn it off?”

He doesn’t want to ask how long it has been running. “You're flooding my house.”

She gives him a sorry pout. “I was feeling dry. Help me out?” she asks as she stretches her arms at him.

“How did you get in?”

“I crawled.”

He wraps her in a towel and she quickly pats herself dry but, as soon as her legs are back, she drops the towel and tries to lean against the furniture to drag herself back to the bedroom. He grabs another towel to wrap her with as he helps her stay up.

“Sakura… You can't just stay naked, ok?”

She blinks. “Why?” His heart flutters.

“Because… Because you…”

She suddenly looks very hurt. “You think I'm repulsive?” she asks with worry.

It’d be hard for her to be less repulsive. Her body is sculpted in marble, but soft in all the right places, her legs are unnaturally long, her breasts perfectly round, her behind just firm enough. He has done his hardest not to look at her naked but he is so weak and she is so beautiful… He is trying his best to be respectful, but what if someone else saw her and had bad intentions?

“Your body is yours,” he says quietly, holding her close to him. “You should only show it to people you trust and are really comfortable with.”

She pauses. For a few seconds she looks at him with all the depth of her green eyes and she seems to consider his words.

“Ok,” she says with a nod.

He is relieved that she understands. She turns around, drops the towel on the floor again, and starts stumbling to the bedroom again. He quickly looks away but his face is burning.

He spends a good hour mopping up the water in the bathroom and the bedroom.

Sakura reluctantly accepts to wear a T-shirt again. She tries to walk. It's better than the day before but still not enough that she can stand safely without holding onto something. He also has the strange feeling that she just likes to be carried everywhere in his arms. He never says no. She eats his weekly salary worth of shrimps and clams for dinner. He doesn't care that, between his food and his water bill, their arrangement won't be sustainable very long. He watches her eat like he has never seen anything so desirable.

The next morning he peeks into the bedroom before going to work. She’s still asleep. He briefly finds her cute, but he feels like something is wrong. He gently touches the side of her arm. She is usually cold like the sea, but now she is burning.

“Sakura?” he says as he squats by the bed.

She barely moves. “Hm?”

“Are you ok?”

She struggles to wake up. “I don’t know.”

Her cheeks are red. She's half conscious. He runs her a bath and, when he puts her in the bathtub and her body transforms, he quickly sees what’s wrong.

The wound on her tail is bright red and her fin is inflamed.

“It hurts a lot,” she says with teary eyes.

His chest tightens. He’s calling the doctor before he even thinks about what he’s going to tell her.

[sakuraspages]

sasusaku snippet #10

[Mermaid!Sakura AU - #5]

“Bad night?” Naruto asks. They are at the fish market. Naruto works for one of the merchants who owns the largest fishing boat in the port. He knows Sasuke well enough that he knows when he has not slept at all. After all, they have been through war together. “Nightmares again?”

Sasuke shakes his head. He isn’t sure how much he wants to tell Naruto. He is the worst at keeping secrets. “I… met someone on the beach,” he says slowly.

“Someone?”

“A girl.”

Naruto’s face lights up. “Oooh… is she hot?”

Hot is not exactly what he’d use to describe her. Mesmerizing. Ethereal. Otherworldly, maybe. “Yeah.”

“Did you get her number?”

“No.”

Naruto winces. “How are you gonna see her again then?”

“She’s… still at my place. Sleeping.”

Naruto grins and slaps him on the shoulder. “Holy shit man, you’re fast! Well done! What’s her name?”

How did he not even think about asking for her name? She asked for his and he didn’t even ask hers. His brain doesn’t work properly when he’s around her.

Naruto stares at him in astonishment. “Dude... You have a girl in your bed right now for the first time in what, years? And you don’t even know her name? What’s happening to you?” He chuckles.

“She was hurt, she needed a place to rest," Sasuke explains.

Naruto seems disappointed. “Oh… so you didn’t… you know?”

“No.”

Naruto sighs. “Is she ok at least?”

“I think so. She wants crab. What do you have?”

Sakura. Her name is Sakura. It’s now the only word that exists in his brain.

“What’s the plan now?” he asks as he watches her gobble down the whole tray of seafood that he brought her back from the market. She seems to feel much better after her little nap. It’s surprising how such a delicate creature can eat so savagely.

“The plan?” she asks with her mouth full.

“Do you need me to bring you back to the ocean?”

She shakes her head and puts oyster juice in her hair. “Can’t go back right now. I need to wait for my fin to heal. Plus I want to find out why I’m here.”

“You’re here because you washed up on the beach during the storm. It happens a lot to dolphins and orcas–”

“There has to be another reason," she says as she keeps eating. "I never get lost in the sea. I feel like something happened and made me come here.”

She breaks a crab claw with her bare hands and he makes a mental note that she’s not as fragile as she looks.

“The storm happened,” he says.

She shakes her head again. “Something called me here,” she says confidently.

“Do you need me to phone someone?”

She rolls her eyes. “I feel like I have something to do here before I go back.”

“So… You’re staying here?”

She licks her fingers and wipes her mouth with the T-shirt she’s wearing. “Is that ok?”

She’s looking at him through her pink lashes and he is momentarily distracted by the jade of her eyes. There, sitting on his bed, wearing only his T-shirt, and having just devoured a huge box of takeout, she could ask him to give her everything he owns and he would do it without thinking twice.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s ok. But I have to go to work tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“To get money.”

“Why?”

“Right now, to buy more food.”

She worries. “You’ll leave me alone? I can’t even walk.”

It is a problem. He hesitates. “You can’t walk because your legs don’t work or is it because you don’t know how to walk?”

She sheepishly avoids his gaze and wiggles her toes with a pout.

“You need to learn how to walk,” he says.

“Help me?”

He stands up. She sits on the side of the bed and pushes herself up. She stands for a second and slowly leans to the side. He catches her before she falls and puts her back on her feet. She again stands for a moment before she crashes against his chest. She holds onto him strongly and he feels his cheeks burn at the feeling of her body against his. He holds her hand and her fingers feel smooth like marble in his palm.

“Push on your feet,” he says as she uses his arm as support. She tries to move forward and awkwardly kicks him in the shins. He badly muffles a whine. “Not like this. Push on the floor.”

She takes a single step and falls into his arms again. The scent of her hair is divine. He tries not to think that she’s doing this on purpose.

On her next attempt she manages to take two struggling steps and he moves back to give her space to walk. She trips, instinctively grasps onto his pants to prevent her fall, crushes his private parts as she does, and slumps at his feet. He clenches his teeth very hard to repress a loud complain. He needs a few seconds to recover. Why is her grip so strong?

“Are you ok?” he asks as he picks her up and sits her back on the bed.

She squints at him suspiciously. “Why are you so squishy down there?”

He didn’t sign up for any of this. “I think that's enough learning for today," he says firmly. "You can practice again tomorrow.”

[sakuraspages]

sasusaku snippet #9

[Mermaid!Sakura AU - #4]

Sasuke can't tell exactly what he is feeling. It's like his whole body is actively fighting for him not to pass out and yet he can’t take his eyes off the woman with a massive fish tail in his bathtub.

Is this what going insane is like? One just starts having hallucinations, seeing things and hearing them talk? He didn't think he was actually this close to completely losing it. And since the war, he has been having a hard time dealing with injuries, and the mere sight of the blood on her fin makes him nauseated.

“Are you ok?” she asks, and it's like he's hearing her from far away. Her voice. It does things to his brain that are not normal.

He doesn’t manage to speak.

“Can you help me stitch it up?”

His brain struggles to understand what she's asking. “What?”

“My fin. It needs stitches. Please.”

He shakes his head quickly. “What… No, I'm not a doctor…”

She seems to panic. “If it heals like this I'll struggle to swim forever!”

He needs to go to sleep and maybe when he wakes up this will all be a bad dream. “I can’t do that.”

“You can.”

“You don’t understand, I… I’m bad with… injuries.”

“I know you can do it.”

Her voice makes him want to believe her. It fills his brain and makes every cell of his body want to trust her. “No, it'll hurt you,” he says.

“The fin is so thin, I'll barely feel it. It’s only temporary discomfort so that I can swim normally again.”

“Can you do it yourself if I bring you supplies?”

“I would, but my tail is sprained. I can’t move it to reach it.”

“We really need to call the doctor.”

“Please don't!”

Her voice is desperate and it pierces his chest. Her eyes water and they glimmer like the sunset over the ocean. A tear, milky and iridescent like a pearl, rolls down her cheek. Suddenly, he would literally do anything for her to stop crying.

He fumbles in his basement for his old military trunk. He finds a field first aid kit that has what he needs. Still, his stomach twists at the idea of stitching her skin. He tries to breathe to calm himself down.

“I don't want to hurt you,” he says reluctantly when he is back in the bathroom.

“Please…”

"Tell me if it hurts."

"It'll be fine," she says like an encouragement.

With impossible care, he brings together the torn sides of the fin, and gets to work. He glances at her but she seems fine. Only when he reaches a ray of the fin, she whines softly.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

“Keep going.”

He tries to be fast but he can see that she's more and more uncomfortable. "It's done," he finally says when the whole length is stitched. "It's not–"

"It's perfect." Her face is sheer relief and exhaustion. She gives him a weak smile. “Thank you.”

“Are you ok?”

She nods. “I just need to rest until it heals.”

“Do you need to stay in the water?”

She shakes her head. “I can come out. I just need to soak for a few hours when I feel dry. To be honest... I’m a little squished in there.”

He nods and drains the bath water. He tries not to stare when her tail retracts and splits into two long and white legs. He's still unsure it's real. He covers her with a large towel.

Sakura is very relieved that her wound is fixed. Not being able to swim properly would have made her an easy prey in the ocean.

And she barely felt the pain of the stitches as she was watching him do it, so focused on her, so careful not to hurt her, slightly frowning and yet so handsome as he took care of her. He lifts her out of the bathtub and sits her down on the floor again.

He hands her a strange device that he connects to the wall. He gestures for her to press the button and it makes a deafening noise as it blows burning heat in her face. She quickly throws it away from herself. He laughs lightly as he picks it up.

“You will get cold if you keep your hair wet.” He angles the device toward the back of her hair and gently runs his fingers through her long pink strands. She understands. She lets him dry her hair. His touch is slow and soft and the air around her is warm. It’s very pleasant.

When she’s dry, he hands her a piece of clothing and helps her put it on. It's a black t-shirt similar to the one he is wearing, except on her it's baggy and covers her down to the middle of her thighs. It smells like him.

He lifts her up and carries her again and she basks in the warmth of his skin against hers. She can feel the beat of his heart. There is something comforting about him. She could fall asleep in his arms.

He brings her to another room, away from the couch. “You'll be better on the bed,” he says as he gently puts her down. “You can sleep if you want to. I'll go find something to eat. What do you like?”

She blinks. “... Crab?”

He seems relieved. “I can find that. See you in a bit.”

“Wait– Your name?”

“... Sasuke.”

She nods. “I’ll wait for you, Sasuke.”

[sakuraspages]

sasusaku snippet #6

[Mermaid!Sakura AU - #1]

Sasuke looks at the sand flowing between his toes. His eyes sting from the lack of sleep. It’s one of those mornings, where he’d rather stay awake than see another nightmare.

After his family died during the war, he enrolled as a soldier as soon as he legally could, thinking he had nothing to lose anymore. Several years later the war ended and, against all odds and his own wishes, he made it out of it alive. Physically alive, at least.

Now at twenty he already lives the life of an old man, recluse in a small fishermen village by the coast, far away from the crowds and the hustle and bustle that remind him too much of the battlefield, too broken to enjoy his young years, and staring at the sea for days in a silent hope that it will one day bring him peace.

He takes small jobs during the season as a help for fishermen and vendors on the port market. During winter he is a handyman for lumberjacks and carpenters and whoever needs him and can keep him busy. When his mind is restless at night, he takes long walks on the shore under the moonlight until the first lights of the morning tell him it's time to go home.

When he looks up from his feet, something catches his eye on the beach. At first he thinks it's just the white morning sun reflecting on the sand but there really is something washed up on the beach. His heart tightens thinking it's probably a dolphin that died during the night.

He walks faster towards it but suddenly slows down. It's clearly not a dolphin. His stomach turns. It's a woman, lying on the sand on her side, unconscious. Her skin is white and pearly like the inside of a seashell.

When he comes closer he realizes she is naked but her pink hair is so long and thick that it wraps around her shoulders, and covers part of her chest and hips, sticking to her skin like dried algae. She looks like a marble statue.

Suddenly the idea that such a beautiful and delicate being died makes him immensely sad. He looks around. No one is up and out at this hour yet. He squats next to her to see her better. A barely perceptible movement of her shoulder makes him freeze.

She is breathing. She's breathing! He touches her arm and his hand hesitates. Her skin is cold like the sea and she doesn’t react at all to his touch. He checks again but it's no mistake, her rib cage is moving as she breathes and he could swear he saw her eyelids move.

He needs to bring her to safety before the tide rises again. Very carefully, he wraps his cloak around her and picks her up. She feels so fragile in his arms, collapsed against his chest like a porcelain doll. He is relieved not to meet anyone on his way home. It's so early that he can only hear faraway noises of the street market just barely waking up.

He gently lays her on his couch, her head resting on a cushion and her body still covered with his cloak, and calls the doctor. Unsurprisingly, no one answers at this time of the morning. The only doctor in the village is past retirement age and has a tendency to spend the night drinking and gambling. He might not be able to have someone come over to see his new guest in a few hours.

Just when he's hanging up, he sees her move, and rushes to be at her side. He watches her as she blinks slowly and gives him an unfocused, groggy look through heavy eyelids. She has the brightest, greenest eyes he has ever seen. Salt crystals hang onto her pale pink lashes, like minuscule diamants framing the jade stones of her irises.

He is speechless.

[sakuraspages]

sasusaku snippet #8

[Mermaid!Sakura AU - #3]

Sakura blinks. Everything is blurry. She can't figure out where she is. Her body is incredibly heavy. Very slowly, her brain pieces some crumbs of memories together.

She remembers a coastline she didn't know, wondering how she got lost, the darkness of the raging sea, and then the bright pain in her fin before she passed out. She can't feel her tail anymore now. She feels so dry, just breathing is painful, like there is sand in her lungs.

She has never been out of the water for so long. She is usually fine for a few hours but this feels like forever, she is even surprised she woke up.

Someone is approaching, she's too weak to even think about moving to hide. It's a man, he squats next to her to be at her height. His hair and his eyes are jet-black. His skin is light but slightly tanned by the sun on his nose and cheekbones. There is something strangely melancholic in his eyes. His face is young but his expression is old.

Her throat hurts when she tries to speak.

“Are you thirsty?” he asks. His voice is deep and quiet, calming. He brings her a glass of water. It's just enough to wet her chest. It barely helps with how dry she feels. He brings a second glass. And a third. This is not going to be enough at all.

He looks concerned. “You… You want to be in the water?”

She nods with relief. He leaves the room and she hears water running. What a soft sound to her ears.

“Can you walk?” he asks.

She glances at one of her feet that is peeking out of the cloak. She is very unfamiliar with this part of her that she has only seen a couple of times. Her muscles aren't responding well. This is so different from her fin, it's like wearing someone else's body.

Without further hesitation, he picks her up and carries her to the next room. His body is radiating heat, especially his chest when he holds her against him. He probably does manual labor, his arms are thick and his posture strong, and he carries her without effort.

His skin is soft, he has no scales and no gills. From where she is in his arms she can see the details of a short but dark stubble that enhances the sharp angle of his jawline. He's comfortable, smooth and warm like a tropical current. She could float in his arms a little longer.

He lowers her in the bathtub but her toes burn and she squirms to avoid the water. Is he trying to boil her alive? Cook her like these scary stories for kids say humans cook lobsters? But he is not putting her in the water. He is holding her so close as she clings on to his neck. She can smell the wind of the sea in his hair and… soap ? He doesn't look like he had bad intentions. He simply looks worried. Or maybe it's just his normal thoughtful state. He sits her down at his side and she catches him glancing at her limp legs. He quickly looks away.

Finally he makes the water cold enough and she cannot wait when he helps her get in. The water immediately makes her feel better. She can sense how it soothes her body. She feels lighter again as she lets her arms float at her sides. She closes her eyes and feels the tingle of the change in her spine. He says something but she doesn't pay attention.

The growth of her tail is unusually uncomfortable. She splashes water all over the room as her fin fills the bathtub and she twists with the pain. She opens wide eyes at the extent of her injury. Something is definitely sprained in her tail, on top of the large open wound in her fin. Just trying to move it in this tiny bathtub makes her jaw clench and her eyes water with pain.

She can't go back to the sea like this, she would immediately be washed up again, or eaten by an orca. But she can't do anything on land in this state, she can't even walk. And she still cannot explain how she got lost in the ocean and ended up on this small shore.

She is so engrossed in the contemplation of her problems and her injury that she doesn't hear him come back. He is there, standing perfectly still, a towel soaking water at his feet, staring at the blood on her tail like he's seeing a ghost.

It's too late to turn around now, she has no other choice but to trust him. “𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘱?... ”