Warning: Lame lamedy lame lame lameness! You have been prepared! (wrote this forever ago, sorry)
Disclaimer: I don't own it, people.
Sasuke did not like messy things. He did not like things imperfect things. He would practice, hour upon hour, to make sure his shuriken hit the bulls eye of every target. He made a point of keeping his room, here in Orochimaru's lair, perfectly clean—not a difficult task considering its Spartan furnishings. And he was notorious for rewriting any and all papers on which he made a mistake, preferring to redo them rather than cross out the error.
Messy was not tolerated under any circumstance.
Sakura, on the other hand, fell squarely under Sasuke's definition of messy. She was loud. She scolded and simpered and bothered him without any regard for his feelings. Sasuke believed that language should be simple. Sakura spoke as though the words proceeded directly from her half-formed thoughts to the tip of her tongue. Sasuke considered relationships superfluous. Sakura obsessed over them. Sasuke wore muted colors; Sakura adorned herself with colors bright enough to blind the toughest ninja.
She was completely disruptive. And disgusting. And in all the years it had been since he'd seen her, she hadn't changed one bit.
But she had found him. Sakura had, against all odds, broken her way into the depths of this cave. She had smashed the wall between them with a force he'd never seen before, had stalked through the rubble and confronted him.
"You jerk," was the first thing she said.
Sasuke blinked.
Was he a jerk?
"Oh?" He replied, reaching slowly for the shuriken beside him. "And who was it who hunted me down against my wishes?"
"Put that down."
Sasuke ignored her.
"I said put it down!" She crossed the room in two quick steps, and held her own weapon to his throat. "You're the idiot here, not me," Sakura growled.
Sasuke contemplated her. She was very close to him, close enough to see the scratches on her face from recent battles, the scar on her forearm from some enemy he never met. He wondered, briefly, if she would have earned that scar if he'd stayed. Who has thrown themselves in front of her, he wondered, since I've been gone? Nobody strong enough to prevent that scar.
Messy, messy.
Sakura leaned in toward him.
"Do you know why I'm here?" she whispered. "Do you know why I followed you?"
"Because you have a death wish? I won't hesitate to kill you, you know." His voice was cold.
"I'm here because I love you." What, again? How many times had he heard that? How cliché could a girl get?
"Those are empty words. Let go of me, Sakura."
"Will you kill me?"
Sasuke snorted. "Do you want me to?" With a sudden motion he grasped her wrist, knocked the blade from her hands, and flung himself backward. "That's one thing I'd be happy to do for you!"
He expected Sakura do scrabble for her lost weapon, or to snatch a new one from the pouch on her belt. That was the sort of thing Sasuke would have done. But she didn't even move.
"What?" he jeered. "Too afraid to fight?"
She said nothing.
He narrowed his eyes, lifted the shuriken and took aim at her throat. He could picture what would happen if he released it, the way her neck would sound as it snapped and her blood spilled across the floor.
Still, she said nothing.
Sasuke walked closer to her, following the line of sight between her and the shuriken in his hand. She stared at the ground. Closer, closer... finally, the cool metal hovered only an inch from her skin. He opened his mouth, about to toss out another taunt, but stopped as she raised her eyes to meet his own.
"Do you think I care?" she asked.
What...?
Sakura's eyes were very green. Very, very deep and green. He jolted away from them as though he had been struck. She never broke her gaze.
Green, some small voice in the back of his mind reminded him, goes very badly with pink. It is an extremely disorderly combination. And just look at her face, green and pink and pale with splotches of brown dirt, and streaks of red from crying. Messy. Hah. Why are you afraid of her?
He could kill her now. All he needed to do was move the point of the shuriken a little further... regardless of his will, his hand edged a little closer to her neck.
And then it stopped. One slender finger had finally moved from her side, and it pressed against the sharp steel point.
One finger.
Delicate flesh against the bloodthirsty metal.
A wisp of pink hair.
Something seemed to break in his mind; he was seeing things in snapshots, unable to stop or think.
Finger.
Hair.
Shoulder.
Cheek.
Bright red, ragged, messy fabric.
Lips.
And then, all at once, she was kissing him. Her mouth, impossibly, on his; her nose brushing his check. Sasuke could smell the salt from her tears, but he could not move away. He found himself fixating on the curve of her ear, where his breath fluttered a loose strand of hair.
How careless, he thought.
He felt his lips move against hers, ever so slightly. Am I...? Somehow, he was kissing her back, annoyed at himself for being so easily taken advantage of, so easily manipulated.
Messy.
Not, Sasuke realized, that I care.