Work Text:
What idiot suggests a camping trip in the middle of winter? wonders Sasuke, as he and the rest of his old academy classmates pick their way on frigid ground through the bare-leafed forest on the outskirts of the village.
Sakura laughed at him the other day when he broached this topic over breakfast. “Well, try to make an excuse, then. Like all the other times they invited you.”
Sasuke frowned—no, pouted—through a mouthful of rice, an undignified but adorable form of protestation that Sakura couldn't help but giggle. “You ran out of excuses, haven't you?”
Sasuke put down his chopsticks. He sighed. “...Yeah.”
So now, over the mindless chatter of his peers, Sasuke inclines his ears to listen to Sakura, who is casually rattling off trivia about deciduous trees and daylight hours and dormancy.
“That’s interesting,” he comments, deliberately slowing down his hiking pace, so as to fall behind from the rest of the rumbunctious pack.
Sakura likewise matches him.
At this, he catches her eyes gleaming with some old mischief, some old wordless understanding between them, and they laugh, their breaths misting in the cold.
“Having fun yet?” asks Sakura.
“Listening to you, yeah,” answers Sasuke, and—
Her heart stutters, just as she almost trips. Sasuke catches her elbow, his warmth seeping through the thick fabric of her coat.
For some reason, they make it a competition to start the fire, but they exclude Sasuke, as it apparently constitutes cheating. By the time they get one successfully going, however, their energy is all but spent and their fingertips are half-way to being frostbitten. They huddle closer to the fire, happy to be warmed.
Except Sakura.
She finds Sasuke sitting at the entrance of their tent, and snuggles next to him, literally next to him—with zero millimeter of space between them.
“I like this warmth,” she says, resting her head on his shoulder and hooking her arm around his.
“Having fun?” asks Sasuke, an echo of her question from hours ago.
“Curled up like this next to you, yeah, Sasuke-kun, I’m having so much fun.”
And when she peers up at him, Sakura pinpoints the exact moment his breath catches in his throat, on account of the absence of mist exiting his lips for two full heartbeats.
“And you?” she asks, her eyes so startlingly green, so alive even when most of the world has gone to sleep in the winter.
Sasuke can't help it—he drops a quick kiss on the tip of her nose where a snowflake has landed. “Aa. Finally, I am—”
“Hey!” someone shouts. Sasuke is still reeling from the gentle cold on his lips and can't be bothered to figure out who it is trying to ruin…whatever this is. Someone with a grating voice. But then, that isn't really narrowing it down. “You two get over here. We're not your chaperones!”
Sasuke rolls his eyes. Sakura giggles. She tells him, smiling, “Sasuke-kun, you really should come up with an excuse next time.”