Archive of Our Own ^beta

They don’t notice anything out of the ordinary at first. Truth serums are generally slow to act, so they technically did not even realise what exactly Sasuke had consumed until a couple of hours after. Truth serums do however have side effects such as dizziness, nausea, fever and sleepiness. Considering this, when Sasuke begins displaying these symptoms, the group assumes he has fallen ill. 

He has not fallen ill. 

This becomes apparent a little further into their day when his tongue starts to loosen, and things he would never usually utter would slip out of his mouth without warning. 

Things like:

“You’re the prettiest girl in the world.” 

It came out of nowhere. Everything had been utterly normal. Today Sakura had been flirting with him like she usually does, pushing Ino away whenever she got a little too close, and batting her lashes up at him while talking about how she used a new mascara today and, ‘ Do I look pretty, Sasuke-kun?’

When the response to that question fills the air, he is almost confused at first. How did someone manage to speak his exact thoughts at that moment? And why is it suddenly so silent? 

When he glances around, he sees that everyone has frozen. They all stare at him in silence for a solid five seconds, while he stares back in confusion. That is, until it finally registers in his mind that it was he who had uttered those words, rendering everyone speechless. 

Sasuke himself is frozen in absolute mortification and unable to believe what just came out of his mouth. 

And Sakura gapes at him with wide eyes and disbelief written all over her face. 

“…What?” she says. 

His mouth opens and closes wordlessly, tongue trying to find the words to explain but coming up short. He blinks twice, face flaming and thoughts whirring, all while his entire academy class and teachers, plus some, all stare at him in bewilderment. 

“…I…I,” he mumbles uselessly. 

Without permission, his eyes fly over to Sakura and his body stiffens anew at the utterly shocked expression painting her features. Her face is as red as he imagines his is. 

It isn’t until someone finally breaks the silence—Yamanaka Ino—that he is finally ripped out of his frozen stupor. 

“Who would’ve known you like big foreheads and weird hair,” Ino sneers, practically steaming from jealousy. If Sakura wasn’t frozen stock-still from Sasuke-kun’s reveal, she would have rubbed it in the blonde’s face. 

Sasuke’s head snaps towards Ino’s, looking strangely mad. “Her hair isn’t weird and your forehead is bigger ,” he says in defense of Sakura, which sends yet another shockwave of bewilderment through the little crowd, as several gasps and laughs disguised as coughs fill the air.

Sasuke fears he will never recover from this humiliation. 

Ino gasps, affronted, while Shikamaru snorts loudly. Choji is hiding his snickers inside his bag of chips. 

At those reactions, it’s as if his body kicks back into motion, and he unfreezes. He needs to get out of here, away from all these eyes. He can’t stay here, with all these people, where his mouth can keep running without his permission. 

With his heart in his throat, he mumbles to Kakashi that he feels sick—which isn’t entirely untrue—and bolts from the clearing. 

As he passes her, Sakura stops him with a firm grip on his arm. He turns to glare at her, unable to process all these conflicting, overload of emotions. “What?” he hisses. 

She opens and closes her mouth a few times, trying to find her words. When she still hasn’t said anything, and everybody is staring at them, he snatches his arm out of her grasp. His entire body is stiff and he’s becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the attention. 

She keeps staring up at him with her big, green, glittering eyes. It’s annoying. Did the goddess herself pluck two viridian stars from the sky and plant them inside Sakura’s skull? How in the world is it possible to have eyes that colour? 

“Stop looking at me like that,” he says, twitching, as his thoughts spiral away from him, out of control, the way it always does when she is near. 

Sakura is startled. “L-like what?” she asks cluelessly. Like what , she says! Sasuke’s patience is wearing thin. 

“Like that ! With those—those eyes !” 

And without waiting to hear her response, he hightails it out of there. 

When he gets home, he receives a hawk summon almost as soon as he steps foot through the door. Unfurling the note, the words scrawled in Kakashi’s chicken-scratch tells him he has likely ingested a truth serum, and not to worry as it doesn’t have any life-threatening symptoms. 

Sasuke almost wishes it would. 

———————————————

Sasuke has been cooped up in his apartment, poring over the journals he had scoured the library for, desperately searching for a cure. 

He doesn’t find much. From what the texts say, there’s about two options: go and search for someone decent enough at seals to administer a seal that can cancel out the serum, or simply wait it out as it will eventually wear off. 

Sasuke is an impatient boy. He does not want to simply wait it out , not when it has him feeling so exposed and vulnerable, however in his current condition, going out into society to search for someone to help him would make him feel even more exposed and vulnerable, no doubt. 

He hasn’t even left his apartment since The Incident, dammit. Luckily, they haven’t been assigned any missions in the meantime as Kakashi has apparently fallen ill , so Sasuke won’t have to face anyone just yet, including his teammates. 

(He has a sneaking suspicion that Kakashi had taken pity on him and decided to help him out in his own frustrating way. He cannot say he doesn’t appreciate it). 

With no other choice, he is forced to choose option two. 

But waiting is proving to be hellish. Especially when his mind keeps drifting off to that day. Every time he remembers the events that unfolded that day he feels like wrangling himself. 

He can’t get over all of their faces, varying degrees of shock and amusement. And indignation coupled with embarrassment from Ino; he honestly feels a little bad for what he said to her—he may be callous with little to no exclusions, but he’d never been one to comment on anybody’s looks before, positively or negatively. 

But-but she had insulted Sakura ! And he simply couldn’t have that! 

Besides, her hair and her forehead are some of Sakura’s best features—other than her eyes, that is—so what if her forehead is a little larger than the average one? It’s charming. Sasuke is not a shallow person but even he knows arguably the most objective fact in the world; Sakura is pretty . 

Which immediately brings him back the acute embarrassment that engulfed him when he blurted those exact words out. 

He wants to bury himself in these scrolls. He wants to busy himself with training. He does not want to think about how green her eyes are and what a peculiar but fascinating colour her hair is and how she blushed and looked so pleased when he’d called her pretty immediately after the shock that initially flooded her features—

Which is yet another thing that infuriates him because what is there to be so shocked about? Sakura is pretty, in ways he can hardly grasp, so why did she look surprised? Because it was him who said it? Besides, she was the one who asked him if she looked pretty in the first place. What, did she think he was going to say no ? (Probably—but that’s not the point). 

Sure, he’s never ever verbally acknowledged it before but, come on . It’s an objective fact . It shouldn’t shock her so much that he knows it’s true. If anything, it’s an insult to his intelligence for her to assume he wouldn’t know she’s pretty—for how oblivious can one be to not observe that? What kind of shinobi would that make him? 

Abruptly, Sasuke pauses. He realises with a flush that he has been thinking about how pretty she is for the past—he checks the clock on the far wall—five minutes. 

Is the serum affecting his thoughts too? He’s thinking things that he would’ve normally struggled to admit even to himself in the privacy of his mind. It’s like the serum is forcing him to confront his innermost feelings, without even the possibility of escape via adamant denial. 

He just keeps going around in circles, contradicting himself. 

Releasing a yell, he burrows underneath his blankets, hoping he could fall into a deep sleep and never wake up again. 

———————————————

His plan to isolate himself doesn’t last very long at all. 

His classmates visit him. They bring flowers and chocolates of all things, despite knowing he has zero use for them at all. He is perplexed because why are they acting like is sick or something? But because he never gets visitors and his manners regarding the home and guests that his mother had ingrained into him growing up, he cannot turn them away. 

None of them stay for long anyway much to his relief, shuffling around awkwardly after giving their condolences, before bidding him goodbye and leaving once more. 

A day or two passes, spent flipping through the library scrolls hopelessly, before Sakura comes banging on his front door. A feeling of panic seizes him, and he locks the door and doesn’t answer to her incessant knocking, pretending he’s not home, even though they both know he has nowhere else to go at the moment. 

Eventually the banging goes quiet and he breathes a sigh of relief after a minute, assuming she got frustrated and left. But then he jolts as she comes barrelling through his window, completely undeterred by his numerous traps. 

“You need to work on your traps,” she huffs as she rises from her crouch, looking windswept. 

Sasuke flushes. When did she get so good at disabling them? 

“What are you doing ?” he asks defensively, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, not knowing what to do with his hands and body. “Why are you here?” 

She glares at him ferociously, so different from how she usually looks at him—stars in her eyes—that it almost causes him to stumble. 

“To see you!” she shouts. “You’ve been avoiding me!” 

“I told you to stay away from me until this serum wears off!” Sasuke snaps at her.

“Why?!” she yells back as she takes a step towards him, finally losing her patience. He’s been avoiding her this whole time. She understands that he’s in an awkward position—but it’s only her he refuses to be around! Surely if he was that worried about embarrassing himself, he wouldn’t want to be around anyone. 

He doesn’t even avoid Naruto as much as he avoids her. 

He stares at her in frustration as she continues to close the distance between them, his face as red as a tomato, which has been a common sight since this entire fiasco began. He grits his teeth, also a habit he’s acquired, in order to try and hold back his words, she suspects—though it’s always been in vain. 

Like now. 

“Because then I’ll accidentally tell you that I like you! ” 

Sakura’s eyes widen, just like his, and she is caught so off guard that her foot trips over air and she stumbles. Sasuke reaches for her, but instead of preventing her from falling, ends up crashing down with her. 

She’s on top of him, her arms caging his head, and when she looks up at him, her pink hair is wild around her face and her green eyes are still staring at him in wide-eyed shock. 

“…You like me?” she whispers. 

And he wants to say no, he wants to deny it so bad because he cannot believe this is happening to him but—but the damned serum won’t let him! 

“N—…..yes,” he says. 

This. This is what he’s been fearing. The truth that he himself had a hard time admitting, something that he ignored and shoved so far down he was normally able to keep it completely out of mind. 

She looks at him in utter shock, the same expression in her face that she had the first day. He is as mortified now as he was then. 

Before she can say anything, he pushes her off and stands up, before stepping towards her despite his red face and concerningly fast-racing heart, and stares her down defiantly. 

“This doesn’t change anything,” he hisses. “Fine. Maybe I do like you. But it can never develop into anything, so don’t get your hopes up!” 

“And why is that?” she retorts with her chin up, ignoring the mixture of pain and elation swirling in her heart. 

“Because I have a goal, and romance and love and—”

“ Love? ” Sakura’s eyes almost pop out of their sockets. 

“ Whatever! ” Sasuke immediately diverts, blushing furiously. “Anything along those lines have no place in my future—in my life. I have a goal; to get revenge on that man who took my family from me.” 

A few moments of silence pass following his outburst. All that can be heard is the tweeting of birds in the trees, and Sasuke’s harsh breathing. Finally, Sakura breaks it. 

“You’ve mentioned that before,” she says softly. “About getting revenge on him. At our team seven introductions, and during the bell test.” 

He opens his mouth, and she can only guess that it is to elaborate on that fact. But—

“Yes. Itachi—,” Sasuke starts, but in the next second, Sakura is in front of him, with her hand clamped over his mouth. His words subsequently die off. 

“Don’t,” she says, regretting bringing it up in the first place. She wants nothing more than for Sasuke-kun to open up to her, but not like this. He looks at her with minutely wide eyes. 

“You aren’t in control of your mouth right now. I don’t want you to say anything you wouldn’t if you weren’t in this situation,” she explains. “And I don’t want to take advantage of you, of your predicament.” 

She keeps her hand over his mouth for a few seconds longer, just in case. Bizarrely, he doesn’t push her away or show any negative reaction to her being all in his personal space. He just merely sits there and stares into her eyes. Though, she supposes he understands that he might accidentally start spewing more personal truths, and therefore doesn’t move. 

When she finally deems it safe, she removes her hand, backing up from him as she does so. What she doesn’t expect is for him to say something totally left field, completely unrelated and out of nowhere. 

“Your skin is soft,” he blurts, and watches as her face blooms red. Immediately, he squeezes his eyes shut in embarrassment. Gritting his teeth almost painfully, he groans, “ Shut uuuppp.” 

Sakura, who is once again left speechless and overwhelmingly warm, stutters, “I—I didn’t say anything.” 

Sasuke’s eyes are still closed. He doesn’t want to open them. “Not you,” is all he replies with. Most of the heat is gone from his voice, and he sounds resigned, like he has accepted his fate. 

Well, he’s already revealed to her that he likes her and that he thinks she is the prettiest girl in the world. Surely, it can’t get any worse than this. 

Which is precisely why he approaches her of his own volition the next day. 

“Last time you said you didn’t want to take advantage of my predicament,” Sasuke says in lieu of a greeting. Straight to business, as always. 

“…Yes?” Sakura replies, confused as to where he is taking this. “Um, I’m sorry. What is this about?” 

He sighs impatiently before repeating what she had told him the day before. “When I nearly…spilled some personal truths,” he says, his voice growing a little softer at the memory. “You stopped me. Told me you didn’t want me to say anything while I’m not in control.” 

“Oh…” she replies softly, her big green eyes twinkling in recognition and wonder. “That’s right…” 

“Well…I give you permission…to ask any question you’d like,” he says even as his face flushes bright. 

Sakura’s eyes bug out of her head. “ Anything?” she asks incredulously. Who is this person and what has he done with Sasuke-kun?

“Anything,” he clarifies. 

“B-but…”

“I’m…grateful for you saying that last time. It was—kind of you,” Sasuke says quietly, and Sakura is astounded at the sincerity in his words. “It would have been so easy for you to invade my privacy while I couldn’t stop it, but you didn’t. Thank you.”

“Sasuke-kun…,” she says softly, eyebrows furrowing. “Don't thank me for that. It’s just common decency. Plus, I know how you value your privacy, and that you don’t like to reveal much about yourself, so of course I wouldn’t.” 

Sasuke’s heart clenches at her words. She knows him well, understands his personality, and respects his boundaries. It’s no wonder he couldn’t help but fall for her. 

“…Still.” 

“It doesn’t mean…” she trails off, struggling to find the right words. “You don’t have to… repay me or something silly like that.” 

“ I know ,” he says immediately before clearing his throat and glancing away. “I just…well, I don’t mind.” 

She just continues to stare at him, a blush slowly creeping up her neck and cheeks and ears. Because there is something she wants to ask, the very first thing that enters her brain, and she desperately wants to hear the answer. 

She probably shouldn’t. Sasuke-kun would get that disappointed look in his eyes, the one he gets when she fawns over him and he expects different from her, for her to be serious and see him as a teammate and a friend and someone who is dedicated to their training. He’d look at her like he wanted her to ask anything but this, but he shouldn’t be surprised because of course she would. 

She doesn’t want him to be any more exasperated with her than he usually is, but she decides that he’s seen the worst of her crush anyway. So she bites the bullet and asks him anyway. 

“Do you…do you really not see me—or anyone—in your future?” Sakura asks hesitantly. “…Romantically?”

But he doesn’t react the way she expects. 

“Maybe…one day,” he says after blinking a few times in surprise, as his ears tinge red. “One day.” 

“One day,” she repeats. 

“I’ll open my heart to you. Voluntarily,” he says. “Wait for me.” 

And this time it doesn’t look like the truth is being ripped from his throat, raw and unfiltered and against his will. It looks like it’s easy, like the candor is a relief. 

“Okay,” she breathes. 

“I like you,” Sasuke says, blushing. 

Sakura is a mess and the butterflies wreaking havoc inside of her stomach are not helping her case. “I like you too,” she responds. 

“You’re beautiful,” he says lastly. 

Her breath leaves her lungs altogether. “You said I was pretty before,” she states. 

“Pretty doesn’t cut it,” he tells her very seriously despite his wavering voice and apple-red cheeks. He is so endearingly truthful and it makes her heart ache because she knows that as soon as this serum wears off, he will never be so again. 

But Sakura has always worn her heart on her sleeve and the truth on the tip of her tongue. She and Sasuke are so different, habitating two opposite sides of the universe, but never missing each other in their orbits. 

So she tells him something that she has only ever before expressed with her glances: 

“You’re beautiful too, Sasuke-kun,” she confesses, despite the fact that it is definitely common knowledge. “The most beautiful boy in the world.” 

He turns beet red and she can’t help but swoon. But then her shoulders slowly drop and that sinking feeling fills her stomach again, the one she’s had all week. 

Sasuke-kun must be so uncomfortable. He must hate this so much. He’s the worst possible victim of a truth serum; he’s always looked like he cannot stomach baring his heart, like the vulnerability could cost him everything. And even now, she can tell by his face that it’s painful whenever another truth is dragged from his throat and into the air. 

Sakura thinks that maybe she should be honest too. He’s in this predicament, against his will, forced to say things he’d never usually say because of the nature of his personality. 

She can be truthful too. If only to make him feel less alone. 

“I really want to kiss you,” she tells him, and watches in fascination as his face blooms red, deeper than she’s ever seen him turn. 

“What?” he breathes as though he cannot believe the words that has just escaped her mouth. 

She doesn’t bother repeating herself, because Sasuke-kun has keen ears and therefore there is no way he didn’t hear her the first time. Instead, she elaborates. 

“But I won’t—can’t—because you’re not in full control of yourself right now,” she says, then sighs. “I’m telling you this now because I’ll be too much of a coward to say it when the serum has worn off, and you’ll never be this open again.” 

He just continues to stare at her with wide, disbelieving eyes. His cheeks and ears feel hot. 

“Oh,” he mumbles, mentally trying to shake away the image of their lips meeting tentatively. “Okay.” 

She leaves him standing there with a head full of thoughts of kissing. 

———————————————

Two days later, the serum has finally worn off completely, and Sasuke is back to his usual aloof, mysterious self. 

Naruto pokes fun at him, as expected, and even Kakashi sends him a cheeky eye smile but says nothing, except that he’s glad Sasuke is feeling better. 

Sakura is also her usual self, if a little shyer and more guarded than usual. She can’t seem to look at him for too long, her green eyes flitting away and cheeks blooming red when he catches her gaze. 

And Sasuke— well, as mortified as he still is about what occurred and the knowledge that his entire academy class, plus some, saw a rare display of his inner emotions, is also back to normal. That is, apart from one minuscule thing. 

‘I really want to kiss you.’

He often finds himself flustered and warm, needing to occasionally drag his attention away from pink, pouty, soft-looking lips.