A/N: based of a true story. seriously, the 7/11 across the street from me did have a drug bust.
Disclaimer: don't own naruto, kishimoto etc etc, title from the hozier song etc etc
In all her life as a resident, Sakura swears there has never been a time when she's been this tired and hungry before. There was a point when she carefully counted her macros and micros and all the water stored in her glycogen, but that was a century ago. She doesn't even remember what a calorie is anymore.
So yes, she's absolutely going to make her regular pitstop at the 7/11 just down the block from Konoha General on the way home. Without a fraction of doubt. So what if she's already overdrafted? Not like an extra seven dollars is going to make her hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal loan debt any worse.
Happiness is in Monster and Taquitos, and for as much as people say that one can't buy happiness, she most certainly can and absolutely will.
There is nothing stopping her from getting her fix that night except the three stop lights and that one long ass red light for her left turn.
Speaking of red lights, there sure are a lot more than she's used to seeing parked in the 7/11 lot. And blue lights. And white lights. There are a lot of bright lights and it's not even Friday night, what the fuck—? She squints. Oh. Cop cars. Probably a sting, which is pretty depressing because those druggies are some of the nicest guys she's ever met. Licensed pharmacist teaching her pharmacology? Does not compute. Twenty-three year old high school dropout explaining drug interactions? Better than a cheat sheet.
Slowly, Sakura turns into the parking lot, trying to resist looking too hard at what's going on that she would get into an accident herself (there's absolutely no way she's going to let herself go back to the hospital and end up having one of her colleagues dryly remark, "Haha, back so soon?") Pulling into the closest parking spot, Sakura slowly shifts her car to park and takes a quick glance around, her hand hovering over the handle of her car door.
She counts four cop cars, and two sedans with cardboard over the busted windows she recognizes as Zaku and Tayuya's, which means that the whole of the Sound team has been busted. The store clerk looks bored from where he's watching the whole thing go down, but that's an aside. There's her precious taquitos rolling in their rack, baking in all their atherosclerotic beauty under the heat lamp.
No matter — nothing is going to stop her from getting her daily Monster and Taquitos. Not her debt, not the stop lights, and most certainly not this drug bust that just had to happen at 2AM. How rude!
Stepping out of her car, she clicks the lock button twice. Her car flashes its headlights twice, and she stuffs her hands into her pockets, walking toward the 7/11 entrance. She keeps her head down, walking with great determination to the convenience store as if there isn't a whole event going on right next to her.
"Put the guns down!" she suddenly hears.
She flinches at the voice, almost inadvertently putting up her hands and squatting down. But no, she doesn't have a gun, she isn't doing anything wrong — she's just trying to get her fix. There's something hilariously ironic about that but her neurons are too scrambled to put together any coherent thought other than caaaaaaaarbs and caffeeeeeeeeeine…
Almost there… She can literally smell them… She reaches her hand to the door handle...
"What the hell are you doing?!"
This time, she doesn't recoil. They aren't talking about her. This entire drug operation has nothing to do with her at all. She's just the innocent bystander trying to get some groceries.
"Hey, you!"
Nope, nope, nope. Don't turn around, she tells herself. Just pull open the door…
"Miss!"
Fuck, okay. There aren't any other misses out here right?
She lets the door handle go, slowly turning around as she hears footsteps running toward her.
"Hi," she greets the man coming up to her. "Me?"
He looks at her with furrowed eyebrows. "Yes, you — what the hell are you doing?"
"Getting my fix," she explains, and then his eyes do this thing she's pretty sure they aren't supposed to, because physics, but her brain catches up with her mouth and she corrects, "I mean food fix. Not drug fix. Though, I mean, technically caffeine is a drug, just not an illegal one."
"Ma'am," the officer says, and his voice does something weird to her chest; is this angina? Is it? Oh, the irony. "Ma'am, this is a drug bust and there are guns involved, please leave. For your safety."
"Shisui!" another officer yells at him. "What the fuck is taking so long? Get the bystander out of the way!"
He turns back to her, looking at her like he's expecting her to do something.
Sakura points to the 7/11. "Technically, inside the 7/11 is out of the way. So if you'll excuse me…" she makes to grab the handle once more, but he's faster. Before she's even halfway there, his hand is clamped down and pulling the door firmly shut. Eight carpals and she knows how to break them all, is what she hopes her eyes are saying as she purses her lips.
A stand off of her own.
"Ma'am-"
"Sakura."
"Sakura. Please go back to your car and leave the lot. This is really not safe-"
"For me, sir. This is not safe for me." When he sighs in relief because, hey, the 'bystander' finally gets it, Sakura presses on, using her patented Resident Voice, "Do you know the catastrophic effects hypoglycaemia has on the human body? Do I need to explain them to you? If I don't get inside and get my taquitos and my Monster, I'll wind up hooked up to so many IV's and I am a fucking nightmare to find a vein in, so this is going to end badly for everybody involved so let me in."
"Please stop disrupting justice."
Her eyebrow raises. "Justice?" she retorts, her voice raising. "Justice is not keeping me from getting my damn taquitos, Mr. Police Man!"
"Shisui," he says quietly.
"Shisui!" she corrects.
He bites his lip, glancing behind him at the other cops. When he looks back at her, he gives her pleading eyes. "You're making me look like an idiot in front of my superiors," he tells her.
She feels just the tiniest bit of pity for him. She knows all too well what it's like getting pimped on her rounds and feeling like a dumbass when a snobby intern one-ups her because they memorized some obscure text-box in the readings that's somehow relevant.
(Yes, Kabuto, this is entirely about you, you freaky prick.)
Besides the point; cute officer to dress down.
"Listen. Shisui. I get it, I really do, but I am genuinely, truly, without a shadow of a doubt, famished, fatigued, and broke. Taquitos and Monster is all I can afford to eat at this point, okay? I have to budget my 7/11 runs. Please, sir, I am begging you, let me in so I can eat." She doesn't even need to pretend to look pitiful because she is. The scrubs she's wearing smell of the fifty-year-old sofa she naps on, and the hospital-issued jacket can be carbon-dated to the mesozoic period. Dates are meaningless when she keeps track of her life based on whatever shifts her senior resident shoves her into but she thinks the last time she washed her hair was four or five shifts ago, and given they can easily last thirty hours...
She can see the gears in his head turning. Slowly. But they're turning.
"Shisui!" his superior yells at him again.
"How about this," Shisui looks at her a little desperately, reaching for her shoulders. "If you leave right now, I'll take you out for dinner. Like, with actual food. And vegetables."
He has her at vegetables. It's been so long since she last saw a broccoli she's starting to forget that they're green.
An incredible offer, really. But what is she going to do about her current status of tired and hungry?
He follows her mournful gaze towards the taquitos and sighs. "Okay, if you go and sit in your car, I will bring you a taquito."
"And a peach Monster."
"And a peach Monster," he agrees. "Car. Please."
She smiles satisfactorily, leaning in. "Fine," she says.
"Good," he says. He gestures toward her car. "And I will accompany you."
Sakura blinks. "It's five feet away, I think I can manage."
Shisui raises an eyebrow and when he smiles, there's an adorable dimple on his left cheek that does horrible things to her clogged up heart. "If not for your safety, then my peace of mind? My auntie spent a lot of time instilling date etiquette in my cousin and I."
"This is probably one of the better dates I've been on," Sakura muses as she allows him to walk her to her car and open the door.
"Oh? Why's that?"
"Well, see, the last date I went on ended in a knife fight between my date and his ex. And then I had to drag them both to my ER."
Shisui should look moderately terrified, but he just winks and says, "Good thing I'm strapped."
A/N: so this story was born from the following convo, paraphrased:
me: insert drug bust story here
cat: lol
me: wow we could make this a fanfic
cat: bet
me: bet
and here we are. remember to review and then also check this out on ao3!
-Eien