✔︎ Sakura's Moronic Best Friends (1/2)

Chapter 6; War has started

Sakura sank down onto one of the floor mats by the wall in the sparring room. She brought one of her legs up to rest her chin on, and focused her heavy breathing as she watched Hidan and Kakuzu spar . . . err, well, maybe spar wasn't the right word for what they were doing.

In truth, Sakura loved watching the men in the room spar with each other. It was always full of flying hair and twisting limbs and sweaty bodies. It would have been difficult to say who won each match; both parties involved were typically equally disgustingly exhausted by the end. Sometimes they involved weapons, and when characters such as Hidan and Kisame got a hold of their favorite scythe and sword, respectively, madness always ensued. And while Sakura would never succumb to any of their advances, she appreciated beauty when she saw it.

And these men were at their most beautiful when they fought.

Well, in Sakura's humble opinion, at least.

Sure, it was ridiculously sweet when Sakura was having a bad day and Kakuzu would offer to decapitate whoever was responsible for her mood, his terrifying exterior softening only for Sakura, and the slight twinge of desperation in his voice at seeing her in pain when there was nothing he could really do to help and no amount of decapitations would fix.

Or when Pein's face would hit the sunlight just right, and Sakura would be momentarily blinded by the piercings in his face and the way his strange ringed eyes would shimmer like they were a pool of glass, always moving and rotating invisibly.

Or when Sakura would stumble upon a sleeping Itachi, after a too-long day of textbook readings and eyes glued to a computer screen, relentlessly memorizing facts about the human body and immune systems, and his hair would be coming undone from his ponytail, his shirt would be unbuttoned at the top, haphazardly looking, and his arm would be thrown over his face, his ridiculous glasses pushed off his head, having been swapped out for his usual contacts for comfort's sack.

Or when Tobi would pause in his hyper-ness, and his calm side would be reserved solely for Sakura, and he wouldn't suffocate her in his death hug, but would always seamlessly know when she just wanted to be held after a particularly brutal day or exam. When she wanted nothing more than to just relax.

Those were nice, pretty, gushy moments, certainly. And she would never trade them for anything. But these men - in Sakura's eyes - were at their most gorgeous when they held nothing back, when they were vicious and ruthless and pushed Sakura to limits she never knew she had before.

Like what Hidan and Kakuzu were doing right then, actually. Sakura could not simply call what they were doing sparring, because that was too mundane of a word. She was tempted to call it dancing with a dash of blood thirst, but that wasn't right either.

Hidan had adorned his scythe while Kakuzu had taken up some kind of whips that splayed out at the ends to make it not only one long tendril, but dozens. Hidan had called out for Sakura to watch him "beat stich face into the fucking ground, seriously" before they'd started.

That had been ten minutes ago.

In fairness, ten minutes was not a long time, but with these two fighting each other like they were now, it was an eternity.

They fought differently with each other than they did with Sakura. It wasn't that they held back with her - not anymore, at least. It was that they knew each other so well and had sparred with each other countless times before, that doing this now was like breathing for any of them. It was the same with Itachi and Kisame, Tobi and Madara, and even Naruto and Sasuke, who had both started sparring in the corner once they realized Sakura had been whisked away to the sparring room by Kisame and saw her get into it with Tobi.