Author's Note: Before you begin reading I would like to take a short moment to bring a few things to your attention. Firstly, because this is a modern time or AU story, Sasori is not going to be an exact replica of how he was in the series. You may find certain things he says or does to be out of character, but bear in mind that because this story is set for today's times he would not have experienced many of the things he had in Naruto – including becoming a puppet and joining the Akatsuki. Secondly, I am aware that in the show and manga he is addressed as Akasuna no Sasori, but again being AU I will simply call him Sasori Akasuna. I am also aware that he is technically in his thirties during the series but had the body of his 15 year old self. I've decided though to go intermediate with these two drastic ages and make him 21, putting the story setting in college. And lastly! Please know that I have never written anything more for Sasori than a couple drabbles, but will do my best to make you the reader pleased with my portrayal of his character.
"When I first met you, I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You're seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you're worth." - Haruki Murakami
Chapter o1
First Impressions
I had the driver's side visor pulled down and the morning news buzzing in through the car stereo when I first noticed the red and blue whirring lights of a police cruiser coloring my rearview mirror. "Fuck," I hissed, glancing down at the speedometer to see I'd barely been doing ten over. Reluctantly I pulled to a bumbling stop on the side of the road, flipping the visor back up and turning the radio down to an almost absolute silence. Doing my best to wipe away any scowl that had sullied my features, I tried to instead paint on my most pleasant and innocent expression. I rolled down my window as I saw the uniformed man approach.
"Hello officer," I greeted on an outtake of breath, looking up at him with a sheepish curve of my lips. He was a plump and balding man, squat with beady eyes that were all too quick to dart below my neckline. Fighting back a terrible twitch in my eyebrow I continued, "Did I do something wrong?" His stare finally coming up to mine he responded,
"You were doing 50 in a 35 zone." My expression fell blank. A lying man of the law; how typical, I thought with bitter irony. Knowing better though than to try and argue against him though, I pretended to be ignorant.
"Was I? My apologies officer, I'll be sure to be more careful next time." My voice had now taken on a rougher, more challenging edge despite the accepting words I spoke. The tightening in his eyes told me he'd noticed, and didn't much appreciate it.
"License and registration," he demanded in his fat sounding voice. I gladly looked away and to my old leather wallet, pulling out the picture ID before fishing around in the glove compartment for the proper registration. A minute or so later I presented them both to the man and he told me to wait, sauntering back to his own vehicle with exaggerated superiority. I watched him for a short minute before reaching for my phone to check the time: three minutes past seven. I laughed through my nose and shook my head loosely. Of course I would be late on the first day back to University, I shouldn't have expected anything less. It had nearly become a tradition, really. Out of sheer reflex I dialed in the one of the two numbers I'd ever bothered to familiarize by heart and typed out the message:
Going to be late, don't bother waiting. I got pulled over.
Habitually flipping the phone facedown onto my thigh I let out a sigh, looking through the still open window and to the officer who sat comfortably inside his car. "That bastard better not be writing me a ticket," I growled under my breath, knowing how heavy of a debt that would put me in. Working at a bookstore was hardly enough to live on by a day to day basis. A traffic fine would send me drowning deftly into poverty. Feeling my phone vibrate two short times I quickly picked it up and flipped it back over, finding that memorized number to have responded with nothing more than:
You're an idiot.
I smirked, oddly comforted by my tactless friend, Sasori Akasuna. I'd known the peculiar flame-headed boy since I was six, he being two years my senior. We'd met in the arts and crafts room of a summer camp we'd been cruelly sentenced to while our grandmothers – who also doubled as our caretakers – worked at the local hospital. We both drew in plain pencil the outlines of what it was we really wanted to be working on. He designed the basic schematics of a puppet, while I drew the idea of an outfit I'd had for my beloved baby doll, who was cleverly named Friend.
Though there had been other children who would periodically stop by the room to crudely dish out their idea of what a dog looked like, we were the only two who remained there, unwilling to venture out with the others no matter how desperately the counselors might have begged. Day in and day out we would sit there, occupying the same spots and undeterred from our, apparently, very crucial work. We didn't talk or even so much as acknowledge one another. In truth, we would've much preferred it if the other just left, leaving us with the luxury of predominately having the room to ourselves. It was an unspoken but very mutual distaste for one another that carried on for a long while.
That all changed though when my Nana invited a women from her work over for dinner.
"We're having guests over tonight," she told me slowly, sitting me down on the couch and kneeling in front of me as if it were a plea. "And I'd like it if you tried to be kind and considerate to them." I remember staring at her with dead, disapproving eyes. I wasn't kind or considerate to anyone at that age – only she knew that there was a softer side to me, and even that took years to fully bring to submission. She smiled at me, her eyebrows knitting together in apprehension as she reached up to brush my hair back behind my ear. "She's my work friend and she's got a grandson who's around your age. She tells me he likes art like you; maybe you two could be friends." My lips wrinkled at her suggestion. I didn't need friends, I had my own Friend and to me she was all I would ever need. She listened to me and never complained when I tugged on her hair or threw her against the wall in a fit of rage. She let me scream at her and understood that it wasn't even really her that I was angry with. She always forgave me. She always loved me. She was always there.
"Please just try and be nice Sugar, that's all I ask," my Nana said in a finalizing, wishful kind of way before pressing her lipstick coated mouth to my forehead and leaving a red outline that made my skin itch. When she got up I wiped it away with the back of my tiny hand, feeling angry at her for putting me through this. I stowed myself away in my room for the rest of the morning and afternoon, wanting to drive it home that I was mad with her. I was in the middle of cutting up and 'modifying' one of my old shirts when I heard the doorbell ring. Tossing the scissors and fabric away from me I frantically crawled to the door, pressing my ear against the wood to try and hear out into the living room.
"… glad you could make it Chiyo! Please come in," I made out my own Nana's voice, followed by the scuffling of feet along floorboards and the shutting of our front door. Murmured talk from the guest ensued but I couldn't quite pick out the words, her voice being softer and more foreign than my Nana's. A few seconds later my Nana said, "It's nice to meet you Sasori, you can call me Eiko if you'd like." A silence tailed behind her introduction before she daftly suggested, "Why don't you go to Kaminari's room and see what's she doing? It's the second door on the left." I instantly pushed away from the threshold as if it were suddenly burning the side of my face, staring at it with such horror an onlooker very well might've thought I'd been singed. In the midst of my gawking the door creaked open, revealing an instantly recognizable head of deep ruby hair and uniquely faded brown eyes.
We sat there in a frozen stare-off for I'm not sure how long. I must've been in shock, I concluded many years later when I reflected on the day. Of all the people in the world my Nana could have chosen to become friends with, it had to be the grandmother of the boy who was too stubborn to realize I was the rightful owner of the summer camp's art room. I thought maybe I was being punished for something I'd done; and an inhumanely cruel punishment I felt it to be.
When I finally gathered my senses together enough to formulate words the first thing I said was, "Get out." He only continued to stand there, staring me down with a sort of annoyance in his eyes. Getting to my feet I found myself to be almost an entire foot shorter than him and this for some reason infuriated me. Snatching up my terribly abused Friend I pressed her tightly into my chest, spitting, "You're not welcome here. Now leave!"
"Your grandmother told me to come in here," he finally spoke, that being the first time I'd ever heard his voice. I was only wounded more when reminded of, what I felt at the time to be, my own flesh and blood's betrayal.
"Well I'm telling you to get out." He looked away from me, as if suddenly disinterested, and walked over to my bookshelf instead. "Hey!" I barked. "Are you listening to me?!" He clearly wasn't though, and seemed to have no intentions of starting. I stared after him incredulously for a few more seconds before letting out a child's squeal of frustration. "Fine! See if I care." I figured if he wouldn't pay me any attention then I wouldn't give him any either. Sitting back down and picking up my latest fashion project, I started snipping at the lime green fabric once more.
"That's not going to fit you. You're too big," the intruder said abruptly after having been watching me in silence. Not bothering to look at him I answered,
"It's not for me; it's for her." I gestured to the 12 inch doll resting against the side of my leg. He stared again for a moment before coming to sit a few feet to my left, picking up Friend and turning her over analytically in his hands. I kept glancing up at him from the corner of my eye, cautiously waiting to see what he would do. Finally he said,
"You treat her badly." I frowned angrily, my hands pausing from their trimming of t-shirt as I looked over at him.
"And so what if I do? She's my doll, I can do whatever I want with her." His eyes lifted to mine, any former frustration he had had seemingly evaporated. It put me off.
"Let me take her home. I'll fix her and bring her back to you at camp on Monday." My eyes narrowed into distrusting slits.
"And why would you do that?" I asked, waiting for the cruel ulterior motive I was sure to come. He blinked, as if the answer were so obvious.
"It's wrong to keep artwork in such bad condition." In that one simple statement my view of the boy had begun to change. Any person who was able to see that Friend was truly art couldn't possibly be as terrible as I'd originally made him out to be. I thought on it for another few seconds, last moment skepticisms dawdling through my mind before I finally announced in agreement,
"Fine. I'll let you keep her for the weekend. But you'd better have her back to me by Monday or else." I wasn't sure what the else option really signified, but I hoped it was enough to scare him into being true to his word.
"I will. I really don't like to keep people waiting," he explained in such a way to make it seem like it pained him simply to think about it. I smirked, satisfied by the transaction we'd just made.
"Good, because I don't like to be kept waiting." A tiny, ghostly smile wisped at his lips as he looked down at Friend, lifting up one of her arms to inspect her more closely. I watched him for a minute, my face drawing blank as I took in his features. I'd never seen a person who looked quite like him before; he had a very unique look, I hated to admit. "My name is Kaminari, by the way," I decided to tell him, though I was sure he'd already figured it out. He tilted his head up only slightly enough to look at me from under his lids.
"I'm Sasori." I nodded my head, having already known his name too.
We learned much later in our lives that our grandmother's had been listening outside my bedroom door the entire time, and when we at last introduced ourselves they swore they could've dropped dead right there from happiness. "I knew you two would be good friends from that day on out," my Nana explained to me, as if it were the most obvious truth in the world.
That night as we all sat around our dining room table, eating sesame seed coated salmon with rice and seaweed on the side, both my Nana and Sasori's grandmother watched us with such closeness you would've wondered if they were waiting for something spectacular – which, in their minds, very well might've happened. A smile or exchange of conversation between us would've been an angel answering their prayers. But we both sat silent, eating our food as we typically would in the side by side chairs they made us sit in. We might not have spoken then, but the small exchange of words earlier was enough to last them for the month. Not to mention that, later that night, when I gave him my doll, neither of us saying anything but having a mutual understanding of what that meant, our grandmother's had to all but scrape their jaws off the floor.
But it was true that after that day we started sitting next to each other in the arts and craft's room. We would comment on what the other sketched out – sometimes positively but most of the time negatively – and talk about how incessant our grandmothers were. We began to have dinner at one another's house suspiciously frequently, and even when summer camp ended we discovered that we'd both been attending the same school all along. Being that we were two grade levels apart though we never interacted outside of lunch, in which we would again sit together and discuss our latest art projects in a closed-off manor. No one ever bothered to try and socialize with us, but many girls would whisper amongst themselves on how cute they found Sasori to be. It disgusted to me. Sasori wasn't cute, he was a creative genius. They were simply too dumb to see that.
We never quite came to be kind to one another as a person might typically be towards their closest friend, namely Sasori who all around seemed to be allergic to affection, but it was clear to anyone who saw us that we were each other's best friend. It was all our grandmother's had ever wanted and they of course took full credit for our friendship's success. We never cared enough about the matter to try and argue otherwise. In fact, we never were particularly keen on admitting how close we were period. Inside we were still the loner children we'd been when we first met with a stubbornness that was impossible to break through. Even 13 years later, waiting to be released by an officer so I could drive the rest of the way to campus and find him, was I still unwilling to admit that Sasori Akasuna was my dearest and closest friend.
"Remember next time to obey the law and you might be able to avoid one of these," the policeman said, cutting through my reverie and handing me back my belongings along with a yellow slip of paper. "And don't forget to buckle up," he added before turning to waddle back to his cruiser which I just then realized to be an undercover vehicle, those slick bastards. Looking down at the piss colored paper my eyes skimmed the words at the top then flew to the bottom, instantly spotting the $200 fine.
"That asshole!" I cursed, slapping my palm against the steering wheel in frustration. That was it. I was done for. I'd be eating beans and rice for the next three months. Curling my fingers into a fist around the sheet I tossed it into the passenger seat, put my car into gear, and headed the rest of the way to Konoha University, doing exactly 35 miles per hour the entire way there. "I hope you're watching this copper," I murmured, periodically glancing in my rearview but not seeing him anywhere in sight. It was all the same to me; I'd be spiteful whether I had an audience or not.