I've been spending way too much time watching figure skating from the Pyeongchang Olympics, and it suddenly struck me that pair skating could be (very slightly and roughly) comparable to shinobi work, in the intensive full-time physical training required to be the best, the immense amount of teamwork and trust between partners, and the element of danger. And since I currently have BoruSara on the brain, it felt natural to slip them into the AU scenario. (Shameless self-promotion alert: I'm working on another modern AU BoruSara fic, Rebellious Business, that you can find on my profile if you're so inclined. If anyone is waiting for an update on that, don't worry, it's coming soon!)

Note: although I have basic ice skating skills, I've never done any figure skating, so all of the details in here come from Google or my own (potentially flawed) conclusions from just watching competitions. If you happen to have some expertise and spot something inaccurate in this fic, don't hesitate to let me know!

A couple of skating terms you might find helpful for this story:

- Short program/free skate: most major competitions require each pair to perform two routines—a short program, and then later, the longer, more demanding free skate. The combined scores from both routines determine the winner.

- Throw jump: a move where the man in the pair "throws" the woman up into the air away from him, and she spins in the air and lands by herself.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Naruto or the new Boruto series.

Throw Me

"Welcome back to Olympic figure skating! I'm Iruka Umino, here with my fellow announcer Anko Mitarashi, covering the pairs' final. In this last group for the free skate, up next we have a team everyone's been talking about: Boruto Uzumaki and Sarada Uchiha of Konoha."

"You said it, Iruka. They're the youngest pair in this competition, and in fact they've only been competing in the senior circuit for a couple of years, after dominating the juniors for quite some time. But they're quite the youthful powerhouses; they've got a handful of international medals already. When they're in the zone, they're hard to beat."

"The key word there being 'when,' unfortunately. They've struggled with consistency in the past, and this season has been an especially rocky one for them. We saw an example of that in their short program yesterday, where they had quite a few errors."

"Yup, that score leaves them in fifth place right now—definitely a bit of a disappointment for them, since they were considered to have a decent shot at a medal—and they were still looking a little rough in the warm-up."

"It makes you wonder how much of that is the result of their notorious personality clashes."

"Right, these kids are pretty famous for their personas on and off the ice. They're seen as a classic case of opposites attract: Sarada's the serious one, all professional and businesslike, while Boruto's the playful one, much more laid-back and a bit of a joker, we hear. Some people credit the powerful chemistry in their routines to that contrast. Others think it causes the off-ice arguments that sometimes throw them off."

"Well, we'll see what they make of that chemistry today. With the difficulty level planned for their free skate, if they put in a strong, clean performance now, they could certainly gain some ground in the rankings."

"And we've seen them do it before, haven't we, Iruka? What they lack in consistency, they make up for in perseverance. After that brutal fall yesterday—you know the one I'm talking about—I think we were all wondering if Sarada would even be able to finish the routine, but she got right up and kept on skating like it was nothing. The girl's got guts."

"It was definitely an impressive moment, and scary too. I think Boruto's fumbles after that were mainly due to him being anxious after watching her hit the ice like that, which is something you rarely see from him—he's usually such a fearless skater."

"Overcoming the blow to their self-confidence they'll have taken from that last performance will be their biggest challenge now. Oh, and here they come! It's always fun to watch them take to the ice together—you can see their different personalities showing."

"Indeed; there's that classic blinding Boruto grin as he's waving to the audience, while Sarada's got her usual look of intense focus. Shall we take that typical behaviour as a positive sign?"

"Why not? I've got a good feeling about these two."

Breathing deeply and steadily, Sarada skated out onto the ice, the red skirt of her costume fluttering gracefully around her thighs. She was trailed closely by her blond partner, clad all in striking black, and she heard the surge of applause as he no doubt grinned like an idiot and waved energetically to the crowd as he always did. She forced a quick smile of her own through her barrier of concentration for appearance's sake, circling around slowly and catching the tail end of his brilliant grin as she turned. For a long time after they'd first been paired up she'd been contemptuous of Boruto's eager audience greetings, seeing them as a decision to sacrifice mental preparation time for shallow, cheap attention. But she'd come to realize that that was his mental preparation: accepting the attention without letting it overwhelm him, acknowledging the thrill of being on the ice, stirring up cheers so that he could prove himself worthy of them. It wasn't her way, but it worked for him. And on a good day, what worked for one of them ended up working for both.

Yesterday had not been a good day; there was no getting around that. There had been prior tension between them after an argument during training, and they both knew it was a bad idea to go into a skate tense (but still did it all the time anyway). The connection that so solidly anchored their best performances just hadn't been there, and she'd pretty much been expecting to take at least one fall, but she hadn't expected quite such a bad fall. As a result of his toss being slightly off and her own positioning and rotations being out of whack, she'd landed their throw jump completely wrong—it was generous to call it a landing at all—and had practically belly-flopped on the ice, making hard contact with her knees, stomach, and chin. It had knocked the wind out of her, made her see stars, and hurt like hell, even though usually she was so charged on adrenaline during a routine that she didn't feel much pain until it was over. For a second she'd honestly thought she might not be able to stand and keep going. When she had managed to pull herself to her feet, she'd seen from the distracted jerkiness of Boruto's movement that he'd been an instant away from ditching the routine to skate over and help her, which would have plunged their score to an irredeemable low.

And that had been the lead-in to a skate riddled with mistakes—none quite as spectacular as that one, but almost all except their easiest moves had been a bit off, their easy synchronicity had vanished, and there had been a reluctance to all of Boruto's lifts after that, like he was afraid to drop her. As he generally won them points with his ability to boldly thrust and toss her around at great speed and height, it had been very uncharacteristic. And it annoyed her like nothing else. She didn't dislike falling so much because it hurt or even because it lost them points; she disliked how it made her seem fragile and fallible. Usually Boruto was pretty good about not treating her like glass, even after she'd taken a spill—he knew how tough she was, and one of the strengths of their partnership was his willingness to push her as hard as he pushed himself—but yesterday he'd obviously been thinking about how he could damage her, and she hated it.

One thing was for sure: they weren't going to win a medal today if they skated thinking like that. She'd just have to hope that they could both put all that mess behind them for the next five minutes.

As she skated in toward her partner to begin the routine, she thought back to their post-skate conversation last night.

Eyes closed and headphones in, Sarada sat on the couch in the athletes' lounge with her legs stretched out, listening to the music for her free skate the following day, visualizing her movements alongside the melody. She jumped a little when something cold and damp brushed her face, eyes snapping open to find a water bottle being held out to her by her partner. Boruto's spiky blond hair was characteristically chaotic now that it was no longer carefully gelled for competition, but that chaos was nothing compared to the turmoil in his bright blue eyes as he took a seat at the other end of the couch, next to her feet.

"Thanks," she said shortly, removing her headphones and setting the bottle down without opening it.

He nodded. "You okay?" His gaze lingered on her right knee, which had a large ice pack resting on it. The right leg of her baggy sweatpants was rolled all the way up to mid-thigh, revealing a massive, rapidly darkening bruise.

"Fine. Don't worry about it." The fall had been just as much her fault as his, and even if it hadn't been, it would only hinder their progress if he felt guilty about it.

But obviously that wasn't stopping him, if the uneasy frown on his face was any indication. He took a breath and commented awkwardly, "So...that was...not good."

"Thanks for letting me know," she said, still feeling too bitter about their poor performance to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. "Now that we've established that, we can move on."

Clearly, he wasn't ready to let it go. "If I hadn't tried to throw you so high and fast—" he began.

"Stop," she interrupted immediately, giving him a warning look. "High and fast is your style—our style. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, it's what gotten us this far."

"It's not doing us any good if it's just making us fall!" he protested.

"If it's making me fall, you mean," she said, eyes narrowing dangerously at him behind her red-rimmed glasses. "Dancing around the subject doesn't suit you, Boruto. If you don't think I'm capable of landing the jump, just come out and say it."

"That's not what I'm saying!" He ran a hand through his hair agitatedly and leaned partially over her legs so their heads were closer together. "And I'm not saying it's just your fall, either. You can't land perfectly unless I throw perfectly, and we both take the hit in terms of points, anyway. It's our fall."

She gave him a hard look, assessing whether he really meant it, then nodded. "Then we both just need to go out tomorrow and make sure it doesn't happen again."

She raised her headphones again in a sign of dismissal, but he made her freeze when he suggested hesitantly, almost mumbling, "I was thinking...maybe we should switch out that jump for an easier one. You know, one that we've been landing more consistently."

She stared at him. "Excuse me? Who are you and what have you done with my partner? Because I know I didn't just hear Boruto Uzumaki suggest that we back down from a challenge. Wasn't it just this morning that you were bragging about how you were going to send me flying to the moon, or something ridiculous like that?" She remembered feeling annoyed at the cocky, dramatic statement during their warm-up.

He looked away, blue eyes unusually dim as they flickered down toward her knee. "Yeah, and we saw where that got us."

She was so shocked and appalled that she forgot all about her bruise, ignoring the soreness as she swung her legs around so she could sit up, knocking the ice pack to the floor. "After today, we need all the points we can get in tomorrow's routine! There's no way we'll make it to a medal if we reduce our level of difficulty."

"Yeah, but at least you won't—" he blurted, then cut himself off.

"I won't what? Fall? Get hurt?" she demanded sharply, glaring at him. This was exactly what she didn't want—him treating her like she was weak, like he expected her to falter.

He met her eyes again, finishing quietly, "Scare me."

He bent over to retrieve her ice pack, pressing it back on her leg gently. Her ire fading as quickly as it had risen, she watched him silently. As he made to lean away again, she stopped him by placing her own hand over his on the ice pack, curling her small fingers around his warm knuckles.

"Boruto..." she said with a soft sigh. "I've fallen before and I'll fall again; that's the nature of the sport. But not tomorrow—not if you trust me, the way I trust you." She paused, then grudgingly corrected that to, "The way I should have trusted you today."

His gaze bounced back and forth between her face and their entwined hands. "Yeah," he agreed finally. "All right. Let's do this the way it's meant to be done."

Still detecting traces of uncertainty in his voice, she offered him a small smile, to which he responded with a smile of his own—not quite the big, confident grin he was famous for, but getting there.

A few instants later, he snapped them out of the moment by asking, "Hey, Sarada? Think you can let go of my hand now? It's starting to go numb on top of that ice pack, and I still need it tomorrow to, you know, throw you around."

She rolled her eyes, but didn't lose her smile as she released his hand. Now that sounded more like the Boruto Uzumaki she knew.

Back in the present, she frowned as she came face to face with her partner on the ice. They'd had a good talk—they'd already come a long way since their early days as partners, when most of their attempts to calmly discuss their mistakes had only degenerated into further arguments—but it was much easier to talk about recovering from a bad showing than to actually do it. She could see that truth reflected in the anxious lines in Boruto's face, the tension in his shoulders; tiny signs that announcers and spectators would be unlikely to notice through his jovial demeanour, but immediately evident to her, the partner who knew both his moods and his body so well.

As they skated in close to each other for their opening position, she saw his gaze run up and down her legs, fixing on the location of the large bruise that was now concealed under her nude-coloured tights. She willed him to look back up at her face, to read the message in her eyes: that bruise isn't a mark of fear or failure. It's proof of our strength, our hard work, our success to come.

In an impulsive move, she skated right up to him, even closer than their choreography demanded, and reached out to cup his cheeks in both hands. She pulled his head down so it was level with hers, their foreheads nearly touching. Holding him in place like that, her intense dark eyes boring into his startled blue ones, she ordered quietly, "Send me flying to the moon."

A wave of curious murmurs rumbled out from the audience as he just blinked at her for a few moments. Then a slow grin spread across his face, and he gave her a quick, firm nod as his hands came up to cover hers. "You got it."

She let him go and gracefully turned her back on him for their starting pose, his arm curving around her waist, chin resting lightly against the side of her head. The pressure of it felt familiar and comfortable, yet tantalizing and exciting—in other words, it felt very Boruto—and as the first few notes of their music rang out in the arena, she knew they'd found their rhythm.

Everything came together. Their side-by-side individual spins and jumps were smooth as silk; she could feel him come down next to her at exactly the same time as she did. Their intricate footwork as they danced together along the ice was impeccable and the speed of it was exhilarating—he was such a naturally fast, aggressive skater that occasionally it could feel like he was pulling her along, but today she matched him glide for glide, their hands joining at exactly the right moments as if magnetized.

And finally they reached the first throw jump, the one that had caused her wipeout yesterday. She couldn't deny that she felt a jolt of trepidation as his hands settled on her hips for the lift—nothing was ever guaranteed on jumps—but his grip was firm and warm, the reassuring puff of his breath ghosted along the back of her neck, and she felt the power surge through his whole body as he threw everything into the toss, as he threw her. The momentum was tremendous, and suddenly her spins felt almost easy and relaxed as she flew, he'd given her so much time in the air. She hit the ice perfectly balanced, neatly swinging her left leg out behind her as her right remained rock-steady under her. He was grinning at her as he watched the flawless landing, and although she almost never smiled in the middle of routines—it didn't come naturally when she was so focused—she smiled now. Today was a good day.

After that, they skated with an air of invincibility. In their last lift, he held her up over his head effortlessly with one arm before folding her fluidly over his shoulder to bring her back down, coasting steadily the whole time. Amid her concentrated euphoria as she soared above him, she felt a pang of regret that of the two of them only she would ever get to experience this, this feeling of floating on top of the world with him supporting her, her arms stretched out like a bird on the wing. But looking up into his beaming face as she arched her back over his knee in their final pose, his blue eyes sparkling with pure joy, she realized that he did experience it, with and through her. If her fall was their fall, then her flight was their flight, too.

Sarada and Boruto usually didn't go in for post-skate public displays of affection on the ice as much as some pairs did, but today, after that, she felt as if she never wanted to stop holding onto him, and he seemed to feel the same, if the way he grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her up was any indication. For a wild moment she almost thought he was going launch her into another spontaneous throw jump, and she was half-prepared to go flying into the air (and with the determined energy thrumming inside her right now, she was pretty sure she could have landed it), but he just pressed her tightly to him and spun her around before setting her gracefully back onto the ice.

Fingers still resting possessively on her hips, he lowered his head down to hers and murmured cockily, "High and fast enough for you?"

Hands splayed across his chest, she smirked at him. "Not bad," she allowed, breathless, "but I think we can still do better."

"Yeah...so do I." With that, he closed the remaining distance between them and pressed his mouth against hers. It wasn't a deep kiss, just a quick, hard brush of the lips, but it completely renewed her previously waning adrenaline rush. Suddenly she had a mad urge to start over their routine and perform it all over again, right here, right now.

But this time, even faster, higher, stronger.

A/N: "Faster, higher, stronger" is the official motto of the Olympics.

So did they win a medal or not? Up to you! I wanted to leave this fic a bit open-ended. Actually, I'm not even sure what I pictured as the status of their relationship here—if they're already together, if they're just close friends with the potential for more, if that was their first kiss or not. Feel free to imagine whatever you think suits them best!

Also, if you're curious about what the moves I described here look like in real life, go look up Olympic figure skating and show the athletes some love—they're amazing, and my words don't do justice to their beauty, grace, and skill.