title: silk lines
pairing: SasuSaku.
summary: AU. Signed, sealed, delivered—"I'm yours."
for: I am that person who gives her family "gifts" in lieu of being there. But thank goodness Wednesday is over. Now I will be online twice a week, instead of just once a moon.
notes: Here's to summer, though again, this has nothing to do with hot suns and busy buzzing bees. This is just some gen-fluff. Or something. Sasuke is Some Busy Business Man, and Sakura? She's just lucky.

disclaimer: Naruto isn't mine. And the line that sounds vaguely familiar? Stevie Wonder and his Genius.

The missive had come to him in the middle of the day, brought to him by the eager hands of his would-be assistant, one Uzumaki Naruto.

The envelope was glossy, and silk-lined, and had been passed through the hands of friends and acquaintances, rather than through the impersonality of the national postal system. The result was a surface unmarred by the garishly black ink of the censor's stamp, and an address in green ink—exact, down to the number of steps it would take to reach his desk from his office door—clearly legible despite its handwritten script.

Her o's were perfectly formed, the arches and bends of her r's and n equal in height. Her S was reminiscent of a treble in its mirror-state, its curves, graceful, and its lines, clear. There were no flourishes—no grand embellishments. Indeed, it seemed almost an omen of foreboding that he was receiving the answer in a form so anti-climactic—so simple, so unassuming, and so very unlike her.

He'd asked a week ago over flowers and wine, and she'd considered then, had allowed her lips to curve just so, had let her green eyes go soft, had asked him for "a moment without" to consider her answer. Sasuke had been patient, and for once, she'd been coy—he'd allowed her the respite.

Sakura's "moment" had lapsed into a week, and he hadn't considered the possibility of resolution in this precise manner.

But here it is, Sasuke thought, considering the possibility which rested, quite literally, in the palm of his hands.

Without further ado, he slit the envelope at its opening, and out fell a piece of paper—monarch, in eggshell white—with two simple words.

After a moment, he stood, eyes shut, face unmoved.

Looking up at the door, Sasuke was unsurprised to see the faces of his friends—now groomsmen—peering in, and waiting for the verdict.

"Well," drawled Nara Shikamaru, as he watched the progress of the missive as it drifted to the floor, its words—but not its sentiment—forgotten.

"Tell me I haven't been carrying around a letter of rejection all of yesterday," Hyuuga Neji said pointedly, sniffing in distaste as though the very notion of it made him ill.

Naruto snorted.

"Right, because it was just so heavy, right, Priss-Miss? Well, bastard—tell us already! What did she say?"

Sasuke looked at them and for the first time in eight days, allowed his lips to curve into the smirk he was famous for.

"Yes."

Indeed, Sasucakes. YES.

And the two little words are in the summary.

Thanks for reading!