Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the plot. They both belong to their respective owners. The characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto and the plot belongs to Jennifer Echols, and her book "The Boys Next Door".
Reuploaded: 11/21/2012
Crossed the line, and didn't mean to, I take it back
I thought I'd make it work, never did, but I meant to
I, I, I give up
My Worst Nightmare by Forever The Sickest Kids
"Hey, Pinky," he said to me. I got a close up view of his beautiful black eyes and pale skin as he threw his arms around me and walked right over me. I was forced—but very willing—to throw my arms around him, too, to keep from falling down.
"Oh, pardon me," he said as he pulled me out from underneath him and set me on my feet.
"That's quite alright," I managed to use the same fake-formal tone. His warm hands around my waist made thinking very difficult. My stomach sent ecstatic messages to my brain, something along the lines of, Oh my God, he's touching me! Are you getting this? He's touching me! Which in turn put my whole body on high alert. My heart thumped painfully, just like it did in my dream.
But when I looked up into his eyes, I saw that his gaze was on the stairs leading up to the marina, and that his interest was gone. If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought Itachi was flirting with me. But I did know better. That was how he treated all girls.
He slid out of my grasp —vise-like grip—and made his way toward the stairs. "See you later, Junior," he tossed over his shoulder at me as he climbed the stairs to the marina.
When we were kids, the boys all used to have nicknames for each other, kind of like a secret club, where a nickname meant you were a part of the club. Being the only girl, I was excluded from the club, and therefore I didn't get a nickname. But I wanted one. I wanted them to accept me. Somehow, Mrs. Uchiha must have found out about it, because she forced Itachi and the other boys to include me in their games. The boys decided, since I was a tag along, I would just have the same nickname as my brother, but they tacked on "Junior" so that things wouldn't get confusing. Then, one day, Itachi had a sudden epiphany, and realized for the first time that I had pink hair. Gasp! So, he started calling me "Pinky", but thankfully it never really caught on with the other boys. If there was one thing I hated more than being considered a tag along, it was my hair color.
After a while, my nickname just got shortened down to "Junior" and occasionally "Pinky" (Although, I really only let Itachi get away with calling me by it. No one else can call me Pinky without incurring my wrath.) Once the boys hit puberty, the nicknames fizzled out, until I was the only one left with mine. One that I have yet to outgrow it seems.
This is the kind of thing I was up against. Itachi only saw me as my brother's pink-haired little sister and not my brother's super-hot-and-sexy little sister/woman of his dreams. Sigh.
I watched the muscles ripple beneath the fair skin of his legs as he climbed the stairs. Itachi was obviously unmoved by the temptation of my red tank top. Time for Plan B. Otherwise known as Stage Two: Bikini. When we went wakeboarding this afternoon, Itachi was in for the surprise of a lifetime.
The dock dipped as Sasuke hopped out of the boat. I turned to greet him. We did our secret handshake, one that we'd been adding to for years: the basic shake (first grade), upside down (second grade), high five (fourth grade), low five (fifth grade), knuckle pound (seventh grade), pinky swear (eighth grade) and elbows touching (ninth grade). We'd do the secret handshake anywhere, like when we passed each other in the hallways at school, or on the sidelines during Sasuke's football games. Even if Sasuke claimed it was "uncool" for two almost-sixteen year olds to still be doing a secret handshake, I know he secretly enjoyed it.
All the girls on the girls' tennis team fetched water and bandages for the boys' football team during their games, which was totally sexist and unfair, because you don't see the boys coming down to fetch us water and bandages at our matches. But I never complained, because I enjoyed standing on the sidelines during the games, because that's where all the action happens. The secret handshake had proven surprisingly hard to do when Sasuke was wearing football pads. Nevertheless, we'd made it work.
But Sasuke had gotten together with Hinata a month ago, and ever since I'd heard a rumor that she didn't want her boyfriend doing the secret handshake with "that hoe next door," I'd tried to cool it on doing the secret handshake in public. After all, if it had been me, I wouldn't want my boyfriend doing a secret handshake with anybody but me. Especially if he looked like Sasuke.
Because Sasuke basically looked like Itachi. Smooth pale skin that never seemed to tan, smoldering dark eyes, soft dark hair, Sasuke was definitely hot. But he was no Itachi. Up close and in daylight, you would never mistake them for each other. Their facial features were different. However, at night or from a distance, all bets were off.
They both wore their hair differently, too. Sasuke's hair was shorter and slightly spiked up in the back— and constantly falling in his eyes—while Itachi wore his hair longer and usually kept it tied back into a small ponytail at the nape of his neck. But if they were both windblown in the extreme, like they are now, it was hard to tell. If you happened to be watching from your bedroom window as they beat the crap out of each other at the edge of their yard where their mom couldn't see them—not that I ever did anything like that—the only way you could tell them apart was because Itachi was slightly more filled out and a bit taller, being two years older. Also, they walked differently: Itachi cruised suavely, while Sasuke bounced like a ball that had gotten away from you and into the street.
But the one thing I always used to tell them apart instantly, when I could see it, was Sasuke's skull-and-crossbones pendant on a leather cord. I'd bought the pendant when we were twelve, from a gumball machine. It was the result of one of my—many—failed attempts at becoming more girly. I'd been going for the Mary-Kate and Ashley pendant for myself, but instead I'd gotten the skull-and-crossbones. So I'd given it to Sasuke because it was made for him.
Suddenly, I realized I was standing on the sun-warmed dock, still touching elbows with Sasuke, and staring at his skull-and-crossbones pendant. When I looked up into his obsidian eyes, I found that he was staring at my neck, too. No, wait. Lower.
I smirked internally, "What'cha starin' at?" I asked.
Sasuke cleared his throat and averted his eyes. "Tank top, huh?"
Yes! That was Sasuke's seal of approval. Like, Last day of school, huh? or, Fast and Furious, huh? Granted, he wasn't Itachi, but he was made of the same material. This was a good sign.
I pressed him for more information, "What about my tank top?"
"It's red." He wouldn't meet my eyes, choosing instead to stare out across the lake, giving me a good view of his profile and the suspiciously pink flush on his cheek. Damn it! I had embarrassed the wrong boy. I guess it was back to the football t-shirt for me.
No. I had to stay strong. Now was not the time to worry about this. I had bigger fish to fry.
"Look," I told Sasuke, as if he hadn't already looked, "Itachi's leaving at the end of the summer to go to university. Yeah, yeah, he'll be back next summer, but I don't think I'll be able to compete once he's had a taste of university life and university girls. It's now or never, Sasuke. And desperate times call for desperate tank tops."
Sasuke opened his mouth to speak, but I shut him up by raising my hand. Changing my voice to a deep guy-like imitation of his, I said "I don't know why you'd want to hook up with that jerk." We seemed to be having this conversation more and more often as of late. I cleared my throat, and said in my normal voice, "I just do, okay? Just let me do it, and don't get in my way. Stay out of my net, little dolphin." I tried to bump his hip with my hip, but due to my being vertically challenged, I ended up bumping him somewhere around his mid-thigh. He stared down at me, arms crossed in front of his chest, trying to look serious. He pressed his lips together, trying to look grim, but I could tell that he was trying not to laugh. "Don't call me that."
"Why not?"
"There are no dolphins in the lake." He stated matter-of-factly, although I knew it wasn't the dolphin part he had a problem with. The man-child inside of him didn't enjoy being called "little" anything. Typical male.
I rolled my eyes, "Fine then, little brim. Little bass."
He turned and walked toward the stairs.
"Little minnow."
He turned back. "What if Itachi actually asked you out?"
I resent that. He makes it sound like it's the most remote possibility ever. Like I've only got a one in a million chance or something. What happened to supportive friends? "You act like that's the most remote possi—"
"When he rides in the truck, he has to keep the sunroof open just to make room for his big head. Where would you sit?"
I blinked and looked at him innocently, "In his lap?"
A look of disgust flashed across his face before he jogged up the stairs, making the old wooden planks creak under his weight. Even though Sasuke seemed to be putting up a lot of resistance to the idea of me getting together with Itachi, I knew he wouldn't try to sabotage it or anything. Sasuke and I had always been great friends. When we were younger, and the boys would try to pick on us, we'd stood up for each other as best we could. The idea of me hooking up with Itachi only bothered him because Sasuke hated Itachi with the intensity of the hottest flames of Hell, and the feeling was mutual.
Later on, as I was helping another clueless customer shove off, I heard the planks creaking behind me. Itachi alert! Sensory overload! Never mind, I saw the skull-and-crossbones pendant and realized it was only Sasuke.
As if on cue, Itachi puttered past us in another boat, blasting Crossfade instead of Three Days Grace, and looking smokin' hot with his sunglasses on, his lightly tanned chest polished by the sun. He waited until he reached the very edge of the idle zone (Mr. Uchiha must have been watching to make sure the boys actually idled in the idle zone) before flooring it and taking off across the lake to make another delivery.
I was so busy fantasizing about Itachi that I completely forgot that Sasuke stood behind me until he tickled my ribs. In fact, I was so surprised that I would have fallen in the lake, if Sasuke hadn't wrapped his arm around my waist to catch me. This was the second time a boy had touched my bare stomach today, and it was a little anticlimactic.
Don't get me wrong—the feeling of his fingers on my stomach was pleasant. Very pleasant, in fact. But I knew he was just being friendly, brotherly even. I knew that he was completely devoted to Hinata, and he knew that I was completely devoted to Itachi. It was like having a craving for ice cream, but having french fries instead. Sure, the french fries were good, but you were left with an odd taste in your mouth, and you still wanted that ice cream.
Yum... ice cream.
For the rest of the morning, I pumped gas, and worked on my mini-tan through my SPF 50 sunscreen. At lunchtime, I went up to the marina and ate the egg salad sandwich and cucumber slices Mrs. Uchiha had prepared for me for lunch, while I watched What Not to Wear. I ate excruciatingly slowly, taking one nibble of food at a time, trying to draw out my lunch as long as humanly possible, in hopes that mine and Itachi's lunch breaks might coincide. After Mrs. Uchiha looked in on me for the twelfth time, I got the hint and headed back down to man the gas pumps. Of course, that's when Itachi and Sasuke roared up to the marina in the boat.
I gave up. Now that Itachi had seen me at least once with my nice, clean hair, I figured it was safe to go swimming. I use the term safe with caution. I knew from experience that before you went swimming off the docks at the beginning of the summer, you had to make sure to check the sides and ladder for bryozoa, colonies of slimy green critters that grew on hard underwater surfaces. Think of coral, but gelatinous. Gross. They weren't actually harmful creatures, and their presence in the lake meant that the lake's water was pristine and unpolluted, blah, blah, blah. None of this was of any consolation if you actually touched them. So after poking around with a spare water ski and finding nothing, I deemed it safe enough to go swimming, and spent the rest of the afternoon watching for Itachi from the water.
And getting out occasionally when he drove by, in order to woo him like Halle Berry in that James Bond movie—the one I'd seen with the boys approximately one hundred times: bikini scene, six hundred times.
Sometimes Itachi was driving. Sometimes it was Sasuke. Since I was too far away to see the skull and crossbones, the only way I could tell them apart was that Sasuke was the one waving, and Itachi was the one looking hot and mysterious behind his sunglasses. Maybe Itachi was watching me, and just trying to appear like he wasn't moved by my newborn self.
Right. That probably wasn't it at all, mostly because I never seemed to be able to time my exit from the water quite right when he drove by. Halle Berry makes it look too easy. So in case they turned around, I'd have to make it appear as if I'd meant to get out all along, for reasons other than driving Itachi wild with lust.
Oh—hair flip—I'd meant to get out all along to read these teen fashion magazines, like any other normal almost-sixteen year old girl. I spent my time examining the pictures and checking the info against what I'd seen on What Not to Wear, plus my own common sense. Being fashionable was all well and good, but if you ended up looking like a hobo or a circus tent, it wasn't really fulfilling its purpose.
Around four o'clock, I started to make my way towards the warehouse. I knew the boys wouldn't come and pick me up in the boat to save me the trip. Well, Sasuke might, if it were up to him. But it wasn't up to him.
The boys were all in the warehouse—Shisui, Itachi, Sasuke and my brother all stood in a line in their board shorts, pitching the equipment we'd need into the boat. Shisui, Sasuke, and Naruto were all half-turned towards Itachi as he relayed some amusing story to them that was probably only partially true. In fact, they didn't seem to notice, but Itachi had stopped working all together, and they were just passing the equipment along in front of him. Itachi's sole purpose was to entertain.
It wasn't fair. I wanted Itachi to entertain me, too. I loved to listen to his stories, because the way he told it, a trip to the gas station sounded like something out of an American Pie movie. But I had to focus. I had a job to do. It was time to implement Stage Two: Bikini. I dropped my backpack, and then took off my tank top to reveal my bikini.
I balled up my tank top, and threw it into the boat. Putting on the girliest voice I could manage, I squealed, "Heeeeey!" and gave Shisui, whom I hadn't seen since he'd returned from university a few days earlier, a big hug. He returned the hug cautiously, trying—and failing—to avoid looking at my boobs. The expression on my brother's face looked as if he wanted to get my dad to send me back to the shrink.
Time for the final step. I turned my back to the boys, bent over, and dropped my shorts. I threw those into the boat, too, and turned back around. Was I ever in for a shock.
What I'd been aiming for was for Itachi to see me as more than the little girl I used to be, and my brother's little sister. I'd wanted him to stare at me and finally realize I was the girl of his dreams. But I hadn't factored the other boys into the equation. And now that all three of them were staring at me, eyes wide and mouths agape, I began to feel a little self-conscious.
When they continued to stare, I began to wonder if there was something wrong. Like, if I had dropped some egg salad on myself, or worse—an exposed nipple.
But I didn't feel a breeze, and I knew that if I took a quick glance down to check for food, the spell on the boys would be broken, and I wasn't ready to be turned back into a pumpkin, yet. So I snapped my fingers and said, "Zone, much?" Which really meant, I'm hot, I know. Hmph.
Sasuke cleared his throat, and turned to Itachi, "Bikini, huh?"
Itachi, who had yet to take his eyes off my chest, slowly dragged his eyes up to meet mine. He gestured towards my bikini with a hand flourish eerily similar to that of Clinton from What Not to Wear, "That does a lot for you."
While I was internally doing a little happy dance because Itachi finally seemed to have noticed me, I smirked and replied without missing a beat. "No, Itachi. I do a lot for the bikini."
Shisui snorted and shoved Itachi. Sasuke shoved him in the opposite direction. Itachi had an adorably perplexed expression on his face, as if he couldn't think of any comeback, which was almost unthinkable for him.
Throughout this whole exchange, my brother was standing awkwardly off on the sidelines, looking like he'd rather be anywhere but there. While I had given a lot of thought into my whole plan for winning over Itachi, I hadn't thought of the reactions of my brother, or anyone else. I wanted to be Itachi's girlfriend, but I didn't want to lose my relationships with the others in exchange.
"Team calisthenics," Naruto called. I understood that he wanted to change the subject, but I'd really hoped we'd be able to skip team calisthenics now that we were all grown up. Mr. Uchiha used to make us do push-ups together before every boat outing, reasoning that, the stronger we were, the less likely we were to get hurt. When my brother and Shisui got their boaters licenses' and we started going without Mr. Uchiha, we continued doing push-ups. It was a good way for the older boys to keep Sasuke and me in our places.
No hesitation, no complaint—this was all part of the game. I dropped on my hands on the concrete wharf just as fast as the rest of them, and started doing push-ups. All five of us did our push-ups, heads close together, with limited grunting at first. And absolutely no grunting from me or from Sasuke. We stayed in shape, because we cared about the calisthenics.
And because we were both in training for sports. Sasuke might be a starter for the football team this year. And I was just trying not to get kicked off the tennis team by an incoming freshman. Sure, my game was good, but I was nowhere near as good as Anko or Hana, who'd just graduated, or Ino, who was a senior and would be team captain this year. Plus, I'd had a bit of an unfortunate incident last year. I didn't train all winter, went to our first meet, overexerted myself, and ended up barfing all over the court. I ended up winning the match, but no one seems to remember that part. Since then, I'd made sure to stay in shape.
Today I held my own in push-ups. After about fifty, I was nowhere near my limit. Shisui's grunting increased. I tried to keep concentrated and only focus on myself, but Shisui was pretty hard to ignore. His face turned red. His arms trembled, and he finally collapsed on his stomach. My brother, who hadn't grunted or trembled quite as much, took this as an opportunity to lie down on his stomach, too, hoping no one would notice as Shisui drew their attention.
Shisui cursed. "Damn it. I just can't seem to get my ass in gear today."
Between push-ups, I breathed, "That's twelve ounces too much partying for the both of you."
Shisui scrambled towards me across the dock, and I knew I was in trouble, but there was no time to run away. One of his arms circled my waist, and the other held my legs together so I couldn't squirm or, better yet, kick him in the gut. He took two steps towards the edge of the wharf.
I'd learned after sixteen years growing up with boys, there was no use pleading or screaming. I'd learned to control my natural girl-reactions a long time ago. It wasn't until he'd pitched me off the edge that I realized I did want to react like a girl today. And that I hadn't screened this area for bryozoa. "Eeee—"
I plunged in. Almost before my toes touched the bottom, I was pushing my way up towards the surface and the platform on the back of the boat, because it was less likely to harbor bryozoa than the rest of the wharf. Ugh, ugh, ugh, I could almost feel a heinous mass squishing past my skin—but I managed to make it to the surface safely.
I slapped myself mentally as I hauled myself onto the platform at the back of the boat. If I'd really pulled off my "new Sakura" thing, Shisui never would have thrown me into the lake. He would have been too afraid to touch me. I would have been too haughty and delicate. Well, at least on some level he acknowledged that I was a girl. If I had been Sasuke, he would have just shoved me off the wharf instead of picking me up.
As I stood on the platform, I realized I was now wearing a wet bikini. I collected myself enough to try to make jumping into the boat look partially svelte. But no one was paying any attention to me. Both my brother and Shisui stood over Sasuke and Itachi, who were still doing push-ups.
Sasuke, eyes down, kept pushing himself up in a steady rhythm. Itachi watched Sasuke with a little smile and gritted teeth, his face turning redder and redder. The bulging muscles of Itachi's arms trembled.
Oh, shit. Itachi was going to lose.
End of Chapter 2.
Alright, so, a few of you are probably like: (O_o) WTF? SASUHINA?! ITASAKU?! I THOUGHT THIS WAS SASUSAKU!?
IT IS!
You have to keep reading. Everything will make sense in due time. I can't say too much without giving away the whole plot, but for those of you really turned off by the idea of SasuHina, DO NOT FEAR. It won't last. I PROMISE. Don't let the lack of SasuSaku interaction so far deter you from reading this story. All in due time, my friends. All in due time.
Constructive criticism and reviews are greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading!
xx Bethany