sundays and a midwinter crisis
AlexisKeller
They have an unconventional start.
He thinks she's annoying and she yells at him for being an asshole.
It all begins at a little café by the park.
Sasuke's running late one morning and his parents are touching down at the airport to visit him for the first time in four years (they couldn't make it a few days earlier in time for his graduation, but that's okay, Itachi came). So, he's running late and he calls ahead to this little café by Konoha Park for coffee because he really can't face his family without it. This is because his father is annoying and his mother is fussy.
Hence coffee.
He gets there from his apartment in ten minutes and he really doesn't want to waste time here because it'll be another fifteen to the airport. He needs to hurry.
So he swings in, pays, grabs his coffee, turns, and in his hurry he doesn't notice that where he's standing, the floor is wet.
But he has fast reflexes and he catches his step and manages not to spill his coffee.
But sadly, that's not all.
He also unintentionally pushes a blonde that pushes a pink-haired girl next to her who spills her scalding hot coffee on Sasuke.
Fucking Christ.
He stands still and clenches his jaw tight, glaring at the offending stain at his shirt and then at the offending girl in front of him.
"My shirt," he croaks and it's not quite a growl because his skin is still burning like fuck.
"I'm sorry," she says, looking alarmed as she should be. "I am seriously, truly sorry."
"Sorry's fixing this how exactly?" Ah, there it is. The bite in his voice is back.
She opens her mouth as if she has something to say, but ends up pressing her lips together. "I'll get it dry-cleaned."
"Be better if you'd just watch where you're going," Sasuke says. "That would have saved a fuckuva lot of time and my shirt."
That's when she narrows her bright green eyes at him and accuses, "You know what? At least I was standing where I should be, not in the closed queue where the floor is wet, asshole. And so I wasn't the one who caused a chain reaction to spill my coffee on you." Her friend barely stifles a giggle.
Screwed as that shit was, it made sense.
He doesn't admit that. He settles for glaring again.
And as he does this, he notices that she's pretty. Really fucking pretty. Intelligent green eyes, long pink hair and elegant features all make her so.
She's got fascinating lips too.
Remembering, he glances at his wristwatch again. He really doesn't have time for this.
He makes it around the two girls and stalks out the door without another glance back.
In the end, he meets his parents at the airport with a huge coffee stain on his shirt.
Sakura hates walking Naruto's dogs.
No, that's not right.
She loves Ramen and Pizza, really, she does. She also does like walking them.
She just hates the part where she has to get up early in the morning to do that.
Like for example, today: seven in the morning on a Sunday.
That should be a fucking crime.
It was Sunday, which meant she should be at home wallowing and moping the entire day way because Monday was imminent.
But then again, Naruto was too lazy to sacrifice his lazy day, so someone had to. And Ino was not going to be that someone because on the Saturdays that Sakura didn't go out with her, she usually got back at five a.m. after partying it up.
So that duty fell upon her.
She wonders how long the three of them would live together. They've had an apartment near campus and have been living together for some while now. Almost a whole year, to be exact.
Which was a long time.
She finds a bench and unfastens the leashes on Ramen and Pizza, after which they disperse, dashing straight towards the birds near the fountain. She doesn't mind, this is how it's always been and they're collared dogs, not to mention the fact that they always come back to her. She settles on the bench and her mind continues along the previous line of thought.
She knows she'll never forget Pancakes Friday—Naruto sucked in the kitchen but man, was he good at pancakes. She'll also never forget Ino inadvertently teaching both of them how to master the art of tuning out during cheesy pop songs and she'd done this by playing her favorites out loud every morning while they got ready for classes, much to their chagrin. Also, she loves that she'd had both of them beat at Call of Duty.
Hmm. Maybe instead of thinking of it as a temporary circumstance, they should stick to their current living situation. At least for the rest of their time at college.
It's as she's pondering this that someone drops down on the bench she's sitting on, right next to her.
She turns and stares.
She remembers him. Of course she remembers him.
It's not every day you spill your coffee on Adonis.
Alright, no.
He wasn't Adonis. Not by a long shot.
He was better (no offense to the Greek God, she was sure he a good personality or whatever).
This guy was rougher, more rugged-looking and the continued presence of the small stubble around his mouth suggested that he wasn't into growing a beard but he wasn't completely against it either. He was seriously tall and had great shoulders. His hair and eyes were dark in a particular way that made him look Gorgeous with a capital g.
Then she remembered the downright jacked up way he'd talked to her and the stormy way he'd blown out of the café.
That sobered her up quickly.
Because she'd bet anything to say that Adonis might've had better manners than this guy.
Then she notices he is doing some staring of his own.
This makes her super-conscious. It's Saturday morning and she's walking dogs; and not down a runway, so she'd barely managed to run a brush through her hair, wash her face, brush her teeth and change into dark jeans and a grey long sleeved sweater. Oh, and her trademark necklace.
No makeup.
She had gloss on, but except for that, nothing.
But then she notices the way he's staring and that's enough to tamp down some of her mortification.
He liked what he saw. The appreciative glint in his eyes say so.
Oh, fuck ducks, she needed to go.
She's just about to get up when he says one word that scares the living hell out of her, "Dinner."
She looks at him, unsure of what he means but scared of what he implicates. "Um, sorry?"
He matches her gaze with those dark eyes and says in a strong, clear voice, "Go to dinner with me."
She had to have heard that wrong.
"I don't even know you." She states.
He looks amused. The nerve. "Sure you do."
"What I do know of you is that you have bad manners," she tells him happily.
"Then get to know the rest of me," he counters with ease, putting an arm on the head of the bench behind her and leans back comfortably.
She wants to, she really does because he is hot but she's witnessed him being an asshole and she really doesn't need that, so no.
"No, thank you." She's about to get up again, but then he says something completely outrageous that nearly gives her a freaking heart attack this time.
"It'll happen, that mouth on mine."
She freezes.
Yes. Yes, please, some part of her brain shrieks and then for a moment, so does the part of her brain that possesses common sense.
When she thinks she has a hold of herself, she looks at him again and actually screeches, because really. "What?"
He didn't say that, she chants to herself. You heard it wrong, he didn't say that.
He says nothing more.
Gives her a look and turns to gaze out at the park.
She is indignant and embarrassed and this has to be the second time he's made her so.
She gets up, claps her hands twice, and Pizza and Ramen trot over to her dutifully. She tags on their leashes, all the while making it a point to ignore this man's existence.
Really, she complains. And she doesn't even know his name.
She turns on her heel and starts walking away just as he calls out, "Sakura."
She wouldn't have stopped, really. But he somehow knew her name, so that surprised her.
How did he even know her name?
Instinctively, her hand went up to the silver chain Naruto and Ino had had crafted for her (she and Ino agreed that nobody went with their whole first names on chains anymore but Naruto had declared that just initials were far too ordinary, so there was a tiny little script that spelled her name on it) and she realized that was how he knew.
When she darted a quick glance at him, he simply said, "It's Sasuke," with those dark serious eyes and she blinked.
What, he could read her now?
She tugged on the leashes and did the only thing she could possibly do in the situation: she bolted.
She sees him again next Sunday.
She doesn't talk to him and he doesn't bother initiating conversation. Just tags along uninvited as she takes a walk in the park while Ramen and Pizza are terrorizing the birds.
It's kind of nice, actually.
The Sunday after that, he initiates conversation.
It's terrible and it goes something like this:
"You're annoying."
Her mind blanks for a minute due to sheer fury.
"What?"
He doesn't repeat what he said. But she'd heard him. Oh, she'd heard him.
"What? I'm annoy—I'm annoying? Because I'm the one who's unwelcome and tagging along anyway? I mean, stalker jazz, much?"
This seems to satisfy him because one side his mouth hitches up and Sakura very nearly forgets that she's pissed at him because he looks amazing.
What? She's only human.
She continues to gripe, though. "And really, why are you even here anyway? I think it's the third Sunday now. What are we going for here? Are you going to Sunday-stalk me? Is that it?"
That must amuse him more because the other corner of his mouth hitches up a little too.
His increasing hotness was really grating on her nerves.
"You know," she spits out bitterly, "the hottest guys are always the serial killers."
He raises his eyebrows at her. "So you think I'm hot."
Great.
It was a double-edged sword. She talked herself in it, now she had to talk her way out.
"No," she says. "I think you're a serial killer."
Silence.
It's official, she's an idiot.
He raises his eyebrows again and even though he isn't exactly smiling there's humor on his face that says she hadn't exactly talked her way out.
Ugh.
"Okay, really," she begins again, because she really needs to set the record straight here. "How long do you plan on doing this?"
"A while," is his vague answer.
"Sasuke," she starts, and he turns to her sharply. The look he gives her is different; pretty intense.
It so makes her want to jump in bed with this stranger.
Then she realizes that it's probably the first time she's ever called his name.
Something about that chills her to the bone.
She doesn't say anything. Just gets caught in his eyes as he gives her that look.
Then he moves. He gets closer, as if he's just about to lower his head and Sakura's fucking anticipating it, because her eyes nearly flutter shut and her blood feels like it's on fire.
It's a nice feeling. But it doesn't last for long because it's as if he snaps out of some trance and straightens.
Then he just turns around and walks away.
She hates that he almost kissed her.
She hates that she wanted it.
She also hates that he stopped.
Sasuke sees her again on the fourth Sunday, that is, the first September Sunday.
This is getting old. He's going to have to get them out of this Sunday thing they've fallen into because it's now irritating.
Of course, he runs at Konoha Park everyday in the morning before heading down to the firm and working with Itachi. It's been a couple of months since Sasuke graduated from KU but he wasn't known for sitting on his ass doing nothing for long. So, he was getting acquainted with work before he made the next move in his career.
But the current situation had its perks too.
He got to see the pretty girl with serious attitude who could probably sass him into laughing and Sasuke had no fucking idea the last time he'd done that.
Jesus.
His endgame was her, of course. But he'd almost fucked up last Sunday. He had to get to know her well in order to get her to lower those kitty claws, and he'd very nearly screwed that.
He wonders if she'd even be here now, after he'd done that; almost kissing her.
He also wonders if she's figured out that him expending effort and time on her meant he was into her.
The first time seeing her here was merely coincidence, the second time almost the same but the third had been all him. Now too, it was him looking for familiar pink hair.
He couldn't spot any pink hair.
What he did spot, though, was a huge-ass bright-fucking-yellow hat.
There she was.
Hunkered down on a bench with a newspaper open wide in front of her.
Hiding.
Or, well, trying to hide and not doing so very well.
Now? Now he grinned.
hey. how's everyone?
i'm sorry i've been pretty irregular, but i've had a lot going on and life is busy.
this is going to be a three-shot and i hope you liked it. review and let me know! my next update is going to be AOV, which is going to be soon, and i hope everybody there is still alive. hang tight, guys and see you soon.
-lexy.