Work Text:
“Sasuke,” Sakura whispered conspiringly to her Uchiha teammate, “He’s staring.”
Naruto shifts uncomfortably, “Who?”
“Sasuke’s brother,” she hisses and watches her dark-haired friend raise a brow calmly.
“What are you talking about?” Sasuke frowns, shifts his body over to the other side of the couch, and turns to look at his brother, “He’s not—”
He blanches.
Itachi sits across the room and stares intently at the pink-haired woman over the cup of his steaming jasmine tea. His dark eyes are hooded, his eyelashes long and fluffy, and his gaze penetrating. He does not blink; he sips his tea with his eyes open.
Sasuke shifts back closer in his chair to sit closer to his teammates and blinks, “He is staring.”
“I told you!”
“He could have his sharingan on,” Naruto tries to point out helpfully.
Both Sakura and Sasuke glare at him.
“What?”
Sakura lifts her magazine to hide her face and whispers to her teammates, “Why is he staring? Did you do something?”
“What does me have to do with you?”
“He’s your brother,” she hisses dramatically.
She peeks from the top of the magazine, a frown marring on her face – she is so not nervous – she’s just cautious because after all, this is the Uchiha heir and she shouldn’t be looked at like that. She didn’t do anything! She swears. She heals him when he comes to the hospital, occasionally makes small, polite talk with him when she’s in ANBU headquarters, and speaks quietly to him during family dinners, but other than that, she’s done nothing.
Then Itachi does something weird – his eyes do something weird.
The bottom fold of his eye socket twitches and then he blinks.
Naruto frowns and breathes, “Did you see that?”
Sasuke nods confusingly.
“Is he trying to activate his sharingan?”
Sakura pales, “But I don’t want to be caught in a genjutsu—what did I do?”
He does it again, this time his face smoothens, and he tries to adjust his chakra signature to something more calming.
Sakura stares.
It kind of—it kind of looks like…
He does it again.
“Are—Are you winking at me?” Sakura asks in disbelief; her fingers drop the magazine and she gapes.
Sasuke whips his head to look at her.
Itachi frowns, “Did I not do it right?”
Naruto opens his mouth for her, “Do—what right? It looked like your sharingan was having a seizure or something.”
Sasuke’s eyebrows raise, “You know what a seizure is?”
“Why are you…learning to wink?” Sakura’s mouth was moving, but she could hardly believe the sentence coming out of her.
“Shisui says that it would make me look more approachable,” Itachi says almost embarrassed, a mild wash of awkwardness warms over his face, “Especially towards women.”
Relief drops into her stomach like warm water, because Shisui put him up to this, “Oh,” she laughs lightly, relieved. “Winking is not really used to make people approachable, it’s more of a flirting type of thing.”
Naruto nods with approval.
But Sasuke stills.
Itachi frowns, “I know. Did you not understand what I was trying to do?”
Sakura chokes.