denial tastes like fresh cinnamon on sour bread in an avalanche
Gaara tastes like nicotine and sin.
But, Sasuke notes somewhere in the recess of his mind, his lips are soft. Soft like the silk that lines his cold, dead, parent's bed.
He draws back, noting with sick satisfaction the euphoric look on Gaara's face, and feels the guilt flush over him like a heat wave, floating his body up onto a pedestal of unwarranted shame.
He kicks the car door open and slams out like a hurricane, tossing a careless hand over his shoulder in goodbye. The door slams on Shikamaru's grumbled 'see you later' and Gaara's 'You're leaving?'
The chill of the night crawls up his spine like a black widow, which he indifferently remembers, was the spider that bit Itachi when he was twelve.
"Sasuke?"
She's a sweet thought under a raspberry sky, and he hates her.
"It is you. You know, you blend in with the shadows."
He exhales deeply, ignoring the nicotine sitting like a heavy weight in his lungs. She is there, slender hands clasped around her slender legs under her slender eyes hiding her anything but slender heart. She is a scandalous song in his monotone concrete jungle.
He crosses the parking lot, carefully scrutinizing each step with a thousand mile stare that ends at his feet, and lets his weight fall onto the curb beside her.
"What's wrong?" She asks him quietly, nervously.
He can feel his hands trembling and shoves them deep into his pockets. "Not much."
"Do you not like Gaara?" Her soft voice echoes across the tarmac and comes back to him in the form of a heavy judgment straight from the God he can't bring himself to believe in.
He sacrifices a response for a breath in the vain hope that she can understand the inexorable beauty of the empty hole in his chest.
She dips her head, a pink waterfall hiding her face from him. "He kissed you, didn't he."
An earthquake rocks his body and he brings his limbs in closer, licking his lips in just the nervous habit his mother had hated.
The silence serves as affirmation for her and her muffled sniffle makes him grit his eyes in gratuitous quilt.
"It was unpleasant." He tells her, the childish reconciliation he never had the chance to show in childhood coming out in his teens. "Is it always like that?"
She looks up at him, waves of pink falling across her eyes, gleaming in the florescent street lights.
"What, kissing?"
He shrugs, the image of indifference, and turns away, already regretting the conversation.
"Touching lips is so intimate; it's only enjoyable if you genuinely like the other person." She laughs desperately. "You just have to find the right person."
And my right person is you how can you not see it Sasuke it's written in every thing I say and every move I make just look just see just-
He sneaks a look at her, at her blushing cheeks and sad eyes, and feels nothing.
She composes herself, learning from morbid experience. "What about Naruto?" Grating words trip off her tongue like old friends.
He doesn't notice. He's too busy shaking like an obsessive, breathing like a hyperactive, crashing like a manic.
"What about him?" Denial tastes like fresh cinnamon on sour bread in an avalanche.
The corners of her mouth wrinkle and she stares down, down past shoes and concrete and all the way to the sunny marketplaces of Shanghaii.
"You came back." She mumbles.
His blood pulses like fireworks and she doesn't bother sneaking a desperate glance because she already knows the answer to the question she didn't dare ask.
A door slam behind them, and they aren't alone anymore.
"How long have you guys just been sitting outside my apartment?"
Naruto's voice is unmistakable, Sasuke notes, and, to his utter chagrin, feels the tight feeling somewhere between his rib cage and his lungs alleviate enough for him to breathe again.
"Long enough to realize what a shady neighborhood you live in, Naruto." Sakura jokes mindlessly.
Naruto laughs, but Sasuke doesn't, and she deflates like the last balloon at a birthday party.
He collapses next to them in a huff of playful anger and light happiness and everything that Sasuke is ashamed to realize keeps him plowing through day after day.
The stars shine down and cars zoom past and it's just them and forever.
"Shut up, Sakura. You don't complain when you come over for my pool." He shoots her a glare and she snickers.
"That's low, Naruto." She smiles, all her earlier quiet sadness evaporated into the chilly winter air, and Sasuke shrinks into himself just a little.
She stands suddenly, a weird glint in her eye. "Do you mind if I use your bathroom, actually?"
Suspicion emanates from Naruto, as strong as Sunday morning sex and cigarettes, and he asks slowly, carefully, "What for…?"
She raises a manicured eyebrow. "I wanted to check my email. What do you think?"
He blinks, and an awkward tint rises to his cheeks. "Right. Go right ahead."
She wanders off, leaving the two in their pool of silence and surreptitiously traded glances.
"What were you and Sakura talking about?"
"None of your business."
"It can't get any more my business, you two are my closest friends. You could be planning a suicide pact for all I know."
"Well, shit. It was supposed to be a secret."
Naruto listens to the last songs of crickets, Sasuke to the sound of his fingers grating against the concrete.
"Why did you come back?" Naruto asks, whispers, stutters.
The echoes of a fragile promise neither will ever touch. Hushed, cracking voice, the symptoms of loss. "You leave tomorrow."
Naruto coughs weakly, more a creature of sublime nervousness than an adolescent boy. "It's just a week."
"Seven days." Under his breath, Sasuke corrects mechanically.
Shrug. Blond hair twists and twirls in the urban breeze. "It's the same thing."
They both know it isn't.
Naruto, truer than true, smiles.
Inhale.
Exhale.
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