Victory Feasting

“And then I was like *SWOOSH* and Sasuke was like *BAM* and we hit him all at once while Sakura made the throw and it was AWESOME!!!” Naruto grinned excitedly even as he stuffed his mouth full of his favorite barbeque skewers, the grilled meat and veggies cooked with fine sweet sauces over a grilling station before him. He always liked these types of places, they were great for picking up lonely guys for a hot night out... and meat innuendos always made his day better. And even better that this was an Akamichi run all you can eat place too, essentially set up as an over flow point for their love of food, so that their amateur chefs and servers could get experience serving before having to tackle the main family’s massive appetites. And besides that it was almost freaky how much smiling the usually dour Sasuke was doing as well, his lips curled up in comradery as Naruto tirelessly regaled the tale of their success to the world with a gusto which frankly would have seemed strange to any who observed him on a consistent basis.

“It wouldn’t have worked if Sasuke hadn’t been so good.” Sakura demurred, her face slightly pink as she fiddled with her hard won food, thinking not just about how ‘good’ Sasuke had been during the fight, but also of how good he looked stripped down to nothing more than his birthday suit... thoughts which she could allow herself now that the stress of potential failure had passed them by. She couldn’t help but glance up at his smiling figure even as the boy nodded and grinned in agreement with their weird pervert of a teammate’s narrative. In truth she couldn’t help but feel a bit fondly inclined towards the boy, even if he looked better than she did in a mini-skirt, what with his antics and advice having basically ensured that they would pass the final test with flying colours. It was in fact almost dizzying to think of the night before, of how close going along with what the pervert had suggested, allowed her to get to the boy she desired... how much thoughts of said boy naked and vulnerable made her breath quicken and her lips dry with anticipation of... things. Things which she’d read extensively on the biological contexts of, tried mentally preparing herself for even as her mouth watered with the idea that it might be real and in her reach.

She almost forgot the food on her plate as she contemplated it, almost didn’t want to even indulge in this celebratory meal, if only because at the back of her mind hammered and pounded with the thought of it, whatever last night had been, happening again… of staying trim and perfect, or at least doing what she could to become that way.

She poked a few times more at the far too full plate.

“Oh come on Sakura! You were awesome, don’t sell yourself short! I mean look at how all the clones you directed worked out, it was the best! I didn’t even know about the formation thing or any of the rest… and that Bell Idea was nothing but pure genius!” Naruto grinned excitedly, his long blonde hair sweeping about his face, reminding her of another blonde with whom the girl had once been friends… a sad sour note which she stuffed back down in her mind with thoughts of how she’d WON the battle to get closer to this boy over whom they’d both been head over heels.

“That was your idea dummy.” She grumbled, stabbing at the food as she finally decided to shovel it into her mouth either way, the growl of her stomach from having eaten nothing all day, and the light headache that came from the same in addition to the withdrawal from the adrenaline which had been lining her system made the food before her ultimately impossible to ignore.

“It was just a random thing I blurted out, but you made it really happen, you set up the steps and wrote up all that theory stuff you made us remember so we could make it happen, your plan let us really make use of what we could do.” Naruto smiled with wide unbridled warmth. “Ain’t that right Sasuke?”

The other youth simply nodded again, clamping down on his own smile at their achievement.

It had felt… right.

Like clockwork, his actions had translated into advantages, each move on the battlefield turned into a real force for action, each set up rewarded with the redirection of their prey just a bit more into the trap they’d been setting. And even though things went awry from time to time, Sasuke couldn’t help but remember how their team-mate had been pointing out the failure states and ways in which the seemingly simple plan could become complex while supplementing things she’d learned in theory classes in order to keep them a step ahead.

... even if he couldn’t at all shake the feeling that their Jonin hadn’t even tried that hard to push past the limits of what their theory based approach could cover. In the end it had been good enough that the instructor famed for never having passed a team had chosen to give them the right of way.

His eyes glanced back towards the pretty blonde who’d made it all possible in the first place, remembering idly the kiss which the other boy had laid upon him, the slick caress of tongue against tongue, dancing together as he’d suckled lightly at the Uchiha boy’s lips. It had been mortifying, electrifying... intoxicating.

It lingered in his head, just like the further embarrassing session of getting naked together with Sakura did.

For all that she chased after him, he couldn’t help but wonder how his own body held up to the scrutiny, how she saw the lanky graceless frame which he’d been developing into and how her opinion of him had been. Annoying fangirl that she was, she’d been a lynchpin to his success today, and more than that… she’d opened his eyes to her worth as a ninja and team-mate as well. The undercurrent of respect which now tinged his thoughts of about her came also with a strange worry for his own adequacy.

Naruto too seemed to trigger this in him... a thought which frankly he was not eager to explore.

Especially not since the boy apparently could pull off a mini-skirt like a natural.

“Hey Sasuke, you zoned out a bit.” Naruto’s face was quite suddenly uncomfortably close to his own, the crossdressing boy having shifted about in his seat to get closer to Sasuke in their booth. The dark haired boy could barely contain the sudden blush that crossed his cheeks.

“Yeah… Sasuke? Are you alright?” Sakura chimed in, never one to miss an opportunity to ingrate herself with the boy of her dreams.

Then with a sudden widening of his eyes, Naruto grinned. “I bet I know what you’re thinking about.” The boy pressed in closer, hand against the other’s chest as leaned close. “I bet you’re thinking about yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Sakura mouthed, moving closer if just to get Naruto from his position on her beloved. That is, before she realized just what ‘yesterday’ could refer to. “Pervert… get off of him.”

“Oh come on Sakura…” Naruto pouted, looking back over towards the pinkette with a half scathing gaze, before leaning even closer in to rest his lips against the other boy’s neck. “We’re in public, people will notice if you make a scene you know.”

Sakura’s eye twitched as the brazen hussy of a man threw that out into her face, quieting her down from a loud shriek to an angry and slightly impotent glare. Sasuke on the other hand was having a moment of deep confliction, the sudden affectionate nature of the boy had put him off balance, gone from boisterous celebration to amorous arm leech in less than a moment’s notice, it was all that the Uchiha survivor could do to not follow through on his first instincts and attempt to push him off immediately.