A/N: A two-shot for you :) My friend wanted a smut story but I couldn't write it without some kind of plot, hence why it's so long (and it's only the first part, R.I.P. me). This is inspired by a great movie that I watched the other day. Let's see if any of you can tell.
Enjoy, you dirty-minded friend.
Lightly
Sakura looks over the ingredients. There's nothing missing, she's sure. Her mother used to gather all the ingredients like this, side by side on the pristine counter, and she remembers every single one of the ingredients—her mother had taught her the recipe about ten times, at least, when she was little.
She smiles when she has everything. Finally, she can start.
The water ceases to run in the bathroom on the other side of one of the kitchen's walls. Sakura pours each thing where it belongs, and she pays no mind to the lack of sound.
When the flour in a large bowl is done mixing, she opens another bag of flour, and starts pouring the white mixture over the finished flour she had already prepared on the large bowl.
Everything was under control, it was. The oven was pre-heating up, the counter was extremely clean, and her hands didn't tremble, not even once. Her hands that are always warm and small and so deceivingly delicate; her hands that also shatter extensive feet of earth and heal the most complicated of fractures like a normal occurence.
So, it was under control, before Sasuke entered the kitchen and made her drop the bag with the new flour in the bowl, upside down and spilling the contents everywhere mercilessly.
"Sasuke-kun!"
She quickly picks up the spilled-over bag and turns the opening to face her. The bag expels a sigh, making her close her eyes in alarm.
Soon enough, her face is covered in white, dusty spots. Her hair is probably in the same condition. She clenches her fists and refuses to look at him, deciding to give him her tensed up back.
As a result, she doesn't see the arched eyebrow and the face of pure confusion written in his expression.
She refuses to cough, even if her nose tingles with the need to do so a few times, at the feeling of flour in her every pore.
Sighing, she waits until she regains her composure, her dignity, and her mind. She looks down to the white tiles of the floor, even whiter now with flour spilled over. She looks to the bag of half-empty flour in her hands, closing it slowly (lest it keeps puffing air) and letting it rest on the counter. After examining the minor damage she has done to the mixture—and fixing whatever flour was extra added—she turns to look at him.
Sasuke is leaning on the wall opposite from the counter, a hand enclosing the cup of water he's swallowing, looking at her like nothing had happened.
That's until he stops drinking water to regard her with a frown. It's after a few seconds of her looking at him that he speaks, voice presumably innocent. "What happened?" His hair is damp, his white shirt is slightly wet with distinctive drops of water, and his trousers are as dark as the current night sky. She focuses her gaze on an indefinite point over his naked shoulder.
Well, she was perfectly fine cooking on her own, minding her own business and paying careful attention to everything she was doing. Everything was perfectly fine until he entered with fine, soundless steps and touched her arm before getting a glass of water. She dropped the bag and now...
Sasuke's still looking at her.
Remembering her face was probably still full of flour, she huffs in anger and leaves the kitchen in a blur of pink.
When she gets to the small bathroom, her eyes widen in surprise as she stares back at her disheveled reflection. Her whole face is covered in white powder and the front part of her hair is in the same condition; the pink in that zone is barely, if even, visible.
The tap is opened and she quickly gets rid of the flour on her face, scrubbing away until she sees clear skin once again. She takes off the ponytail and runs her wet fingers through her hair, taking off the flour there, but in turn making her frown at the prospect of washing her hair again later.
She turns off the water.
She had to finish cooking today, even if it took her the whole night.
Walking back to the kitchen, she isn't surprised when she spots Sasuke in the same position in which she last saw him. He shifts slightly once she walks in, turning his head to look at her closer steps. She passes by him, standing in front of the utensils and the spilled-over flour.
Deeming the amount of flour appropriate enough, she wraps the bag close and grabs the eggs.
Beside her, Sasuke silently washes the cup of finished water.
She cracks the eggs open and adds four to the mixture. Then, she adds oil. Adding the final necessary ingredients, in the same order that her mother taught her to, makes her more relaxed.
It's the familiarity that gives her the peaceful moment to herself, how she knows the recipe like the palm of her hand. She seldom notices his presence in the same small room.
When she grabs the wire whisk to start mixing everything up, she feels a warm body next to her. Her confidence trembles. She tenses, almost gasping as Sasuke's hip graces her waist for a split second. It's so quick, so fast that she has no time to blink until the feeling is gone. It flips over in her stomach and laughs at her internal glare, making her flinch when he moves away, when the feeling is gone, when he stays silent. She turns her body toward the right to look at him, and the sight she's greeted with makes her mouth run dry.
Before she'd even started placing each ingredient needed on the counter, before she'd even taken out the groceries she had in the bags, she'd served herself a decent amount of wine in a very decent glass. With the scare she'd got when Sasuke stepped in, and the interruption on her cooking, she had left the lonely glass there. Abandoned.
There's a clinking sound, and then a gulp, and then a turn.
She had forgotten about the wine, for Sasuke is drinking the red substance with a fixed gaze on her. Try as she might, her eyes wouldn't move from staring at the dark, bottomless black on his right eye, and at the lilac, spiralling madness on the left.
His hand moves away from his mouth and his eyes leave hers, hand gripping the cup that's suddenly, unintentionally in front of her face. He licks his lips to taste the bitter liquid; quickly, but slowly playing in her head, over and over until she feels confident enough to open her own lips.
She bites her lower lip just as he raises the glass to his own. And it's in slow motion once again, torturing her soul like a stab in her back.
Before he can finish the contents, she takes hold of the glass—her glass, really—suspended in the air, millimetres away from his lips. She carefully avoids touching his own fingers.
If he opposes to the fact that she's interrupting his drink, he does not show it. Instead, he lets go of the glass and drops his arm at his side.
Sakura finishes the wine, and puts down the cup on the counter, moving about to grab the bottle of wine and pour herself another glass.
In the meantime, he sighs and moves his right hand to enter the pocket of his trousers.
The lack of his left arm is wrapped in white bandages with a knot at the end; he finds it's better if it's wrapped up, rather than bare and vulnerable.
As she takes hold of the now full glass once again, he glances to the right, to the mixing bowl, narrowing his eyes ever-so slightly. The kitchen full of containers and utensils, the counter with flour on top.
It's not that he disagreed, it's that he didn't think it was one of her best ideas.
The words are out like a storm in a sunny day.
"You do realise we're leaving this town in two days," he states, glancing to the left to look at her.
She takes a breath and purses her lips, taking a sip of the wine in her hand.
"I do," she answers without a hint of annoyance. Moving to his right side, she walks around him with a patience she didn't know she possessed. "But we've been in the same town for a week, now, and as you may already know, I have been quite busy helping around."
He frowns as she finishes the glass in a few, quick gulps. She puts it on the counter with a weak slam, and grabs hold of the wire whisk. "Help yourself to another glass."
Sasuke stares; he doesn't drink any more wine.
Instead, he grabs the bottle and puts it on the shelf. It's then when he grabs her empty glass of wine and puts it in the sink; he proceeds to wash it. She notices when she's not looking and her hand reaches to hover over an empty space on the counter.
"Hey!" Sakura widens her eyes and places a hand on his forearm, quick to apply enough pressure for his hand to stop moving. "I wasn't done. Why are you washing it?" She turns her head and gasps when the bottle is high on a shelf she can't reach—she'd had to stand on a chair before, a really old chair, to get the bottle. "The bottle too? What's your problem?"
She had been screaming, so he had waited. And waited. Until his arm started to go numb and her questions hadn't faded away.
He takes a deep breath and looks at her from under his nose, a frown etching into his features. How could she talk so much?
"Sakura," he closes his eyes for a moment, before looking at her and her sudden quietness. "Do you plan on getting drunk while baking for children?"
There's a silence in the room that doesn't really belong in which they stare at each other. She gapes at him.
Sasuke had been training and wandering around the town and helping every civilian that needed it in the past week. She, in turn, had nothing to do but stay at the inn from the morning until nighttime. On the first day since their arrival, she had done just that. She had cooked for them and had unpacked the scarce things they'd brought with them and had laid in bed with nothing to do. On the second day, though, she'd gone out and walked around the small village, nameless and friendly. She'd found a small hospital, the smallest one she'd ever seen. From then on and until this day, she's been helping around the hospital with her knowledge and skills.
Everyone had been friendly with her, nurses and doctors and patients. But the people who captured her heart completely were the children. She would play with them and teach them things as little as explaining to them what chakra control means. For a civilian town, everyone had little to no knowledge on ninjas.
They'd carved a special place in Sakura's heart, that's for sure. With their sparkly eyes and soft, high-pitched voices.
Sakura had promised them that before leaving the town she would give them a surprise. And that's what she's doing now: baking cupcakes as a surprise.
She, hesitantly, moves her hand away from his arm and looks up at him and he swears he sees the determination in those green eyes. "Listen," she highlights with her voice, walking to a corner in the kitchen and getting the wobbly chair. She steps on it, not once faltering even though the chair itself looks like it's about to give away. Reaching with her arm, she grabs the bottle with a firm hand and looks down at him with a fierce look. He holds the glare with his own narrowed eyes. "I can finish this bottle, if I want to."
She doesn't explain how her training with Tsunade has left her almost immune to alcohol consumption—yes, she can still get drunk, but only after a very large amount of drinks (not the two that she's had, that's for sure).
He frowns and looks at the bottle, at the chair, and back at her with a blank expression she obviously can not decipher. "And still be sober, I suppose."
Sakura takes the bottle from the shelf, steps down from the chair, puts it in the corner where it belongs, and looks at him like she's drilling holes in his skull.
"Of course."
She walks back to the bowl, grabs the whisk, and he resumes washing.
The scroll he's reading talks about jutsus he already knows. He's read it over ten times already since Sakura joined him on his travels—in a week it would be a month since then.
It's mundane, and he's kind of tired of reading the same words over and over again, about jutsus he's been practicing since he was a boy.
And, although this makes him wish there was something more interesting to do, it's not the reason why he stands up from the worn-out couch abruptly when a half-scream is heard from the kitchen.
He's there in less than a second, in a flash of confusion and alertness.
"Shit, shit, shit." Sasuke stares stupefied. Sakura wasn't prone to cursing, and much less when there wasn't an immediate threat, like he thought. And, looking around the room like a madman and seeing there's nothing to worry about, he knows there's no threat.
Before he can ask about what is happening, she turns around and looks at him like she's been caught stealing candy from a baby. She sounds unexpected, embarrassed. "Sasuke-kun?"
His neck burns crimson when he knows he's been discovered. He stares at her for what seems like an eternity before she speaks again, confusion clearly apparent on her face.
"Is something wrong?"
Well, that's what he'd wanted to ask a minute ago.
Glancing around the room at everything in his current line of vision, he spots the cupcakes on a tray at the far side of the counter, just right over Sakura's shoulder, and an empty bottle of wine next to it. He has the urge to frown.
He sighs and instead opts for the truth.
"I heard your scream."
It's just a few words without any kind of elaboration, but she takes them in quickly as if he'd said more than enough. She blushes a little in embarrassment. "Oh."
She fidgets with her hands a bit, and turns around to grab the tray with a dozen cupcake wrappers on it. She shows it to him, biting her lip. "See?" He has the urge to squint. See, what? Sakura shakes her head.
"On the side, Sasuke-kun," she explains, "I spilled the mixture over the wrappers and now I can't get it out and it's going to look so messy and this was supposed to be a surprise for them but now it's going to be really ugly and the sizes of the cupcakes are going to be disproportional and, how am I going to explain that to them? I think they'll be so disappointed, what with this disaster because: Can't I bake, Sasuke-kun?" She takes a deep breath, "and that's why I screamed."
Throughout her rambling, Sasuke was looking at the cupcakes. If he's honest, he didn't pay any attention to what she'd been saying. But he has an idea on why she screamed, so he gives her a simple nod and looks at the seemingly, perfectly managed, uncooked cupcakes.
"That's fine." It's all he says, and he realises his mistake a few seconds late. He quickly adds something else when he notes her face of pure distress, "I'm sure they won't notice."
Sakura huffs in exasperation and puts the tray in the only oven of the inn (they'd made sure to pay a decent sum of money to be in a decent room, as they were to stay in town for a week or so. It's not like it was a large inn, anyway, probably had two or three rooms in total), making sure to put the right amount of time and temperature.
He looks at it all, shaking his head at her panicked state when it was cupcakes they were talking about.
He returns to the living room and there's nothing to do but read the stupid scroll, so he grabs it and folds it up and puts it on a shelf that's full of Sakura's medical scrolls.
When he realises he's not sleepy enough to go to bed yet, he grabs his sword and sits on the couch, stone in hand.
He places the weapon on his lap and starts sharpening it with a callous, strong hand.
He falters in his methods, puffing out an exasperated sigh out of his throat and into the living room. And in the back of his head he hears the static get louder. Nevertheless, he continues sharpening his weapon with a firm grip, not minding the sounds of protest from a very angry Sakura just a few feet away from him.
"Will this thing work already?" A pause, and then: "It looks fairly new, right? Then, why doesn't it..."
He pays none of his time to the static of the machine. He pays none of his time to regard the amusing sight before him. Instead, he focuses entirely into his work; the only sound he dares hear is the one his Katana makes.
But it's a little hard not to notice the infuriated huffs, the soft slams of a hand on the machine from time to time, and the questions that go unanswered, not to mention the static sound the machine keeps making. It's like a drilling in his ear.
"Ah, there we go!" It is then that he looks at her from under his long bangs. He focuses on his sword soon enough. And even when the happy tempo of the music reverberates in his mind, he refuses to let it deter his concentration.
If it wasn't already, she puts the volume even higher. These walls are made of paper, and he wonders if anyone else in the other one or two rooms will hear. She doesn't seem to care, though, as she swings her arms in the air and moves to the sound of the music, giving him her back.
And so as he keeps sharpening his weapon with a heavy arm, his brow deepening when she starts humming the fast melody.
And so after sighing for the upteenth time, he leaves his Katana on the couch and stands up with his lips in a straight line. He moves, taking steps to the hallway that leads to his room, walking around her in the process.
He saw her hand before he heard her giggle; a butterfly pressure is on his chest and he stops in his tracks. He looks at her face, a head below his own, one feet apart. He has the urge to ask what, but he scratches the idea when she talks her mind first. His head is starting to pound with a headache, and all he really wants to do now is go to sleep.
"Hm, it's barely nine," she says as she sports a tiny frown, clearly faking the mistrust and instead opting to wear a small pout to convey her innocent façade. He stares.
"So?"
She smiles and takes his hand with both of hers, and his eyes nearly widen. "Sakura-"
"Come on, Sasuke-kun." She tries to move him forward so that they're closer to the radio, but he stays rooted in place like a dutiful statue. He knows Sakura can very easily summon her out-of-this-world strength, yet she doesn't and this isn't so surprising to him for some reason.
When she accepts that he wants to stay close to the arch of the start of the hallway, she sighs, and holds his hand between them, in front of her chest—which is at the height of his abdomen.
Without any further words, and surprising him a bit, she moves his hand with the beat of the song (the same one, he notices, from when he was sitting on the couch). It's probably a pop song, from the sound of it. His hand moves up and down in short motions, moving from side to side from time to time, like a little kid making a small victory dance.
He scowls. She doesn't care.
And just like a scene from a romantic novel, she twirls around her axis in a circle under his arm, still holding onto his hand. As she comes back to face him once again, she smiles at him, and the song ends.
All the while he's been standing in the living room like a fool, the only part of him moving being the hand in her grasp.
His headache increases when a new song starts to play from the old speakers.
This song is a slow one, a baritone voice singing in a tongue he thinks is French, and he wants to walk away as fast as his legs let him.
When she begins to move his hand once more, he stills it, stopping her silly attempts at dancing with a brusque and sudden movement.
"I don't dance," he states, so serious and grave that she looks taken aback for a split second. With a glare straight from hell, he turns around.
Not even two steps toward his room, he feels a pull from behind. She's grabbing his white, cotton shirt, biting her lip with indecision.
He looks at her from over his shoulder. "Sorry," she whispers, and he wonders if she can tell how much force he had to use to swallow. "Just one dance," his eyes narrow, turning his head to look at the darkness of the hallway that leads to the rooms.
All his life he'd been alone, seeking power and vengeance for his family. He remembers how his only goal was once in the darkness, and he can't help but let a shiver run up his spine. Those days are over. Now he has Kakashi, Naruto, and Sai (even if they don't really get along because of the painter's boldness, but they're working on it). Now he has Sakura.
"Please?" He's not looking at her, but he can tell her eyes are shining with hope and her lips are trembling with fear. He can't help but wonder if she's really drunk, contrary to what she'd said. A flash of an image runs through his mind, an empty bottle the subject.
He's not looking at her, and she can't see him, so he lets his eyes close.
Sakura who loves him, who cares about him with genuine affection, who would do anything for him, who has given her heart to him since he was a little boy.
His eyes open to stare at a forgotten darkness.
With a sigh, he finally turns around and steps closer to her, hovering over her form like a tower. It's when he nods that she gives him a small smile, right from her wishful heart.
His ears turn a deep shade of red as he feels her put her hands on his chest. She moves with the music, lightly like a flower in the middle of a breeze. He doesn't really know what to do with his hand, and she takes note on that. But, thankfully, she doesn't say anything about his cluelessness.
She guides his hand to her waist, and his hand twitches unconsciously when she lets go, leaving it to rest there on the thin material of her shirt.
He's ready to let go and walk away, damn her pleading eyes and soft voice to the moon, but then he feels her head fall on his chest and his body tenses, eyes widening against her knowledge.
He starts moving slowly, following her own expert steps without moving away at all through the song.
When the song ends, he steps away slowly and looks at her for a fleeting moment, his hand leaving her waist altogether. She blushes and he scowls.
"One more?"
He knows she's kidding, as he knows her well enough to know she wouldn't do that to him. He almost scoffs. And although he knows she's joking, he goes along with it.
"I said I don't dance, Sakura." There's a gleaming in his eyes as he speaks, Sakura notes. She smiles at him, crossing her arms.
"But you were just dancing, right over here."
They stare at each other for seconds, minutes, hours. She doesn't know, and she doesn't care. The fact that Sasuke is humoring her in his own way is too good to pass. So, as anyone would do in her position, she takes advantage of the oportunity.
She is enjoying spending time with him, talking with him without his common aloofness and coldness. He's always turning his shoulder to her, giving her his back, muttering one or two words here and there, establishing eye contact only in crucial or sporadic moments. His presence, body and soul, not with her but specifically during the main meals of the day, and conversation kept to a minimum—from his part, because she was talking every time she got a chance.
She knows he needs time, time to heal his past and to start building a future. That he needed space to start accepting himself, the wrongs and the goods he's done in his life. That he had to think about everything in the past before walking in the present. That he had to fight with himself until there were no demons to kill anymore.
She knows.
And the little conversations and interactions they had in their travels didn't bother her in the least.
Because then there are the tiny moments that make her heart race; sudden skin-to-skin brushes, short glances into screaming eyes, soft thank yous in a harsh voice and meaninful actions. Giving her his cloak when it's cold at night and they're on their way to another town, letting her sleep in all she wanted when she just knew he wanted to depart early to the next village after a night spent camping in the woods.
She knows all of this, and because of said reasons, she has decided.
Loving him without getting reciprocated for so many years can tire even the most devoted of lovers. And she is getting tired. Because she loves him and her heart aches for him every time he's near, with the yearning to touch him but with the fear of rejection close to her palms.
He fists the air with his hand.
Needless to say she's not done waiting, no, because she'll wait for him a lifetime if needed be. And yet, she's done waiting while standing idly aside, doing nothing. So, what if she meets face to face with rejection? Nothing will deter her resolve, not after so long.
She takes a step back and opens her arms at her sides, palms facing him. And she takes a fine breath. "You don't want to dance? Fine." Now there's a gleaming in her eyes, and he doesn't know how to take it.
His lips make a straight line, looking at her from under long bangs as she stands in a defensive manner.
Before he can ask what she's doing, she speaks.
"Let's spar, Sasuke-kun."
He doesn't know if she's serious and he doesn't intend to find out.
He takes a tentative step back, and finally turns around when she doesn't move further.
"I'm going to my room, Sakura."
It's definite: he's leaving to his room this time. He takes one step forward. The tension in the room is so thick he can pretend to touch it. He takes another step. His eyes widen when he feels the air move behind him.
He takes a sharp breath as she throws herself on his back, making him fall toward the tiles of the floor.
He knows he could have prevented the impact from ever occuring, but he didn't. The adrenaline he feels runs through his veins as he's falling, face-first to the floor beneath his feet, makes him remember something. If he lets his mind dwell on the matter, it's a very clear notion that somehow bothers him; he han't fought in months while they were traveling, and even before that. The rogue ninja they ran into from time to time didn't really quell his desire for a good fight; most likely, Sakura would defeat them before he could even land a hit. Not that he wasn't proud, but he still wanted to break someone's bones once in a while.
When some people are nervous, angry, or tense, they use techniques to remain calm, like smoking or having sex or meditating. He considers himself a pretty calm man already, but sometimes he really, really could use a good fight to forget the world. And Sakura was a good fighter.
He wants to sleep. His head hurts. More than anything, this fight screams to him, so he listens.
As soon as he feels the ground underneath his face, she beams with victory, only that not for long. His body puffs in smoke and under Sakura there's a log instead of his body.
Substitution jutsu.
She frowns and turns around fast enough to dodge a punch to her face. Sakura stands, looking at his figure from across the living room. When she dashes forward, all hell breaks loose.
An opera song plays in the background.
The room is a mess.
Two chairs are upside down, the wooden coffee table is on its side, flowers she didn't take notice of before are now sprawled and stepped on on the floor, and there's a broken lamp that rests against the wall at a corner of the room. She looks at him and he looks at her and then they're running toward each other, away, and back again toward each other. There are no weapons used, it's just taijutsu in its rawest forms.
His hand moves toward her and she sits on the heels of her shoes, feeling the air over her head move with his unsuccessful punch. Her hand swings across his side from her lower position, but he moves fast enough to dodge it. She stands.
Sasuke punches and Sakura dodges. She swings her hand and he steps out of the way. They don't land a hit; not even one since they started sparring.
His leg graces her arm when he ducks to land a hit on her, but she quickly takes a step back and grabs his leg to push him toward her and onto the floor. It doesn't happen, though, because he twists around his own axis and pulls her toward him.
Sakura gasps.
Before she can react, he's up on his feet and with a growl he takes a step.
One of the two couches, the smallest one, falls on its side when Sasuke pushes her body against it, the old furniture making a sound of complain before lying still on the cold floor, where Sakura's head lies.
It's not there for long, though, for she pushes him off when she knees him in the stomach. His body stops applying pressure on her own, and so she finds an escape route. She's back on her feet before they can blink, standing over him and ready to punch him in the head with newfound anger for tricking her.
And she's ready to swing her right hand down, the force of her punch sure to draw a little of blood from the wound. As she collides her fist with solid material, she takes a moment to blink. Seconds pass.
She's touching the tiles of the living room, and right where his head should be, there's a diminute crack on the floor.
She resists the urge to curse, deciding to stand straight once more and look around her surroundings. She doesn't get to look around for too long.
Not long after she stands up, her neck stretches back and she feels a body pressed against her backside, hair grasped and pulled back with such force that she finds it hard to swallow. Sasuke's harsh breathing is close to her left ear, making her close her eyes, hard, hoping she could stay this close to him forever. She lets a small whimper fall from her lips without thinking about it, mind only focused on his warm chest against her shoulder blades. And she opens her eyes wide when she notices the slip she's let out and the tensed body behind her.
She can feel his fingers letting go slowly of her hair, almost completely, maybe thinking that he's hurting her, and she turns around quickly enough to see the surprise in his red eyes.
She tries to hit him but he grabs her suspended hand in the air with his own. Her other hand tries to land a hit on his stomach, but his leg easily blocks it.
Thinking this might be the end of the fight, she tries to look for alternatives. This is not the end; it mustn't be. So she pushes against him with all the force she can muster.
And soon enough, they're free falling in the air for a second before colliding with something soft.
He clashes with the still-upright sofa. And as this one is against the wall, it doesn't move at all. But they're moving, so he rolls off from the couch and onto the floor, on top of her. She rolls them over, and then she's stradling him with her head on his shoulder, and his hand holding strongly onto her waist.
They stay quiet, unmoving, until she can hear the clock on the far wall; so far she barely pays attention to it, because she feels a frantic heartbeat against her chest. And, although her heart is beating fast enough to outrun the fastest of ninja, she knows this one is not her own. This one is way calmer, slower than her heart but faster than normal.
Sasuke has been a ninja for more than a decade. He knows how to control the beating of his heart, and his blood pressure is in check all the time. Then, why is it beating so fast against her own?
She opens her eyes to gaze at the darkness of his shoulder and she can finally feel his hand clutching at her waist and her legs at his sides, knees touching the floor beside his hips.
She doesn't want to look at him, doesn't want to stand up and forget about it, or look into his eyes and regret trying to stop waiting altogether. But she's raising her head before she can berate herself, and she's looking into his eyes before she can look away.
They're red, the sharingan the most detailed she's ever seen. And they're spiralling at her own, looking into her eyes like a bomb about to explode unexpectedly. She doesn't blame him; after all, she is less than one feet apart from his face. If she tries to get a little bit closer, she can swear she'll feel his breath against her mouth, and his lips against her own.
Memories of harsh lips against her softer ones pass by her eyes like an old, broken film.
It's only then that she realises she's still panting, even after being more than one minute relaxing, flushed against his chest. Sasuke, as she would have guessed, is not panting at all. His respiration pattern is way calmer than the beating of his frenzied heart.
She lets her hands come out from between them, and onto the floor at the sides of his neck. Raising her head and body up, knees still at his sides, she looks down at him with more confidence, now that there is at least one foot separating their faces and she can think coherently. Her hands support her weight as she speaks.
"I win, Sasuke-kun." She smiles, still panting a little from their wrestling activity from before. There is something acking to frustration in him before it dissipates into the natural dark of his expressionless eyes.
He frowns, and looks at her for a long time. "We'll have to pay for this, you know," he says, a serious tone making itself present.
"I know," she whispers. "There's no one in the inn until tomorrow, though. The owner let me know while you were out in the morning."
That explains a lot of things in his head. The loud music, the sparring session, the carelessness in her actions.
"Aa."
Her elbows give out for a moment with an ouch and his sharingan activates without a second thought, as if it's second nature. She stares at Sasuke with a blush, inches separating them once again. Her hair falls around her and down toward him, like a protective barrier covering the world around them; it tickles his cheeks.
Her want is so obvious that he has to deeply sigh, his red eyes extinguishing into black once more.
Sasuke slowly retreats the forgotten hand from her waist and decides to place it on the floor next to him in order to stand up. He lifts his body up slowly and brings them both to sit—her body slides onto his lap on its accord.
And in the back of Sasuke's mind there's a little voice telling him to ask something that's been knocking at his door since her yelp in the kitchen. The empty bottle of wine flashes in his memory, the way she asked him to dance—for god's sake, to dance with him—without a sense of doubt. His voice is rasp and rough in the edges when he speaks, close to her face.
"Are you drunk?"
She takes a moment to process his question, ears more alert to the sound of his breathing than the sound of his manly timbre. She shakes her head a little to answer his question.
"Nope."
He wants to stand before his mind drifts to places he doesn't want to go, to the conclusions he doesn't want to think about. Instead, he sighs against her lips and swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down once with the motion.
There's silence between them, in the room, in the inn, and probably in the streets of the small town. Sakura looks at him: at his lips, at the little lines that grace the sides of his mouth (as if he's laughed for centuries, even if she knows it's not true, even if she knows the lines are faded but altogether the same his brother had once), at his straight, gentle nose, and at his dark, dark eyes. The same eyes that stare at her own—green and yellow and the colour of apples, or the colour of fading leaves in late summer.
If she isn't drunk, he thinks, then she did all of those things on her own will. If too scared or too brave, he does not know.
They're so, so close. Sakura wants to bite her lip and kiss him here and there, with no second guessing. She can't, so she opts for the silence and the yearning.
But she's waited for so long, so long she feels that if she doesn't reach out to him now she'll lose him forever. Better try than not try at all.
And her hand is shaking at her side, and she can't move even if she wills herself to, but then she blinks and before she knows it her hand is moving on its own, in between their bodies and toward his cheek. And she wants to stop it from going any further because: what if he moves away, what if he flinches and flees from her touch?
But all of her questions go unanswered. Because as soon as her palm touches the soft flesh of his cheek, he kisses her.
His lips press against her with the softest of touches, the gentlest of pressures she could've imagined. There are no twisted tongues or open mouths in the process. It's just a touch, and it's gone before she can truly feel it through her. His head slightly moves away from hers, breaking her dreaming mind, and he stares at her eyelids still fluttering, eyes closed.
She joins their lips together once again, harder and rougher this time, afraid he'll regret it all. He touches her waist and fists her shirt without really registering it in his brain; her shirt rides up with his hand and their lips move against each other's with a hunger that makes him frown.
She's touching his cheeks with both hands, pulling at the hair on the back of his head, grasping his shoulders with force, putting her hands anywhere she can in the high she's achieved. And when she breaks the kiss for a second or two and kisses him again, he doesn't question it. He barely sees anything; everything is blurry and he feels dizzy, a good kind of dizzy.
But then he's touching the hard skin of her toned stomach and he feels her hand guide his own upward, toward something round and soft and cold. She lets his hand rest there. He presses it harder on her skin. And when she moans, he breaks away so quickly that she gasps from the look on his face.
"Sakura." It's as if the gods are laughing at her face. "Stop." He voices it in a whisper, afraid she'll do something stupid, like a hurting man.
His shirt is gone, he realises. Somehow, he'd taken it off—as well as her own, too.
Her breasts stand pert in the soft air coming from a fan on the ceiling, facing him and making him glance down for a moment before closing his eyes and turning his head in another direction.
Her mouth closes in a grim line and she puts the shirt back on, all the while looking at his face, hidden by his longs bangs.
She doesn't know what got into her, really-
No. She does know.
She knows it's only been a few weeks traveling together and all, and she knows she wants him. And she also knows she wants him to want her.
It's not something new that they had kissed. And although she admits they have kissed before—short and sudden, quick kisses that didn't hold anything in between—this kiss was something else. This kiss, she thinks, did hold some meaning to him.
Without further ado, she stands and leaves to the kitchen, turning off the music in the process. She throws the empty bottle of wine to the trash, and takes out the cupcakes, ready to be decorated.
She frowns, knowing that he had initiated the kiss, and that he had wanted to kiss her.
She understands that she needs to wait for him; just a little bit longer, just long enough for him to reciprocate.
She sighs.
Sasuke leaves to his room before she even enters the kitchen.
A/N: There's a next part coming up, don't worry.
