Title: Turbulence
Rating: PG-13 ( T ) – for mild swearing (those damn teenagers) and life-affirming make-out sessions.
Disclaimer: Please store your tray tables in the upright position and ! #$ OFF! I claim nothing.
Summary: AU. Sasuke hated flying. SasuHina.
Don't look down!
Chapter 4: Takeoff
"S-Sasuke-san!" Hinata pled, her chin bouncing off the back of his blazer with each hurried step her captor took. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to pretend there wasn't a cool breeze blowing against the backs of her exposed thighs. "P-Put me down!"
Sasuke ignored her and took a sharp swerve to the left. As they whizzed past it, Hinata snapped her eyes open and caught a glimpse of a luggage cart that the rushing teen had just barely avoided. "Sasuke!"
"Almost there," the boy huffed, making another dodge, then a weave, around some baffled tourists. They watched, quite alarmed, as the two high school students made their unorthadox rush to the closing gate. Hinata dug her fingernails deeper into the fabric of Sasuke's clothes and buried her burning face into his back.
"Did you see - ?"
"Oh, yeah, I saw it all -"
"Right in the middle of the airport - "
"Dude, I totally saw her - "
" - calling security!"
The heiress was beginning to feel dizzy. Bobbing and darting across the terminal, swinging upside down with her nose only inches away from Sasuke's backside, and the burning humiliation of flashing her panties at the entire airport was enough to make any girl swoon. She was prepared to die from this experience at any moment.
The heiress, in a moment of overwhelming panic and embarrassment, tried to wriggle free. Bad idea.
"Aiiiee!" Hinata squealed, pinching her eyes shut as her world began to tilt sideways. Too late, the heiress realized that her landing wasn't going to be comfortable.
Luckily, Sasuke was holding on tighter than she had expected and managed to force her back into place with a single upward thrust of his shoulder. Grunting, Sasuke ordered, "Stop that."
"S-Sorry..."
Sasuke seemed to ignore her apology. "Almost there," he promised a few moments later, wheezing as he readjusted his hold on her legs. Having learned from the near-fall, Hinata resigned herself to being carried off like a caveman's prom date and dug her fingernails deeper into the back of Sasuke's blazer.
Hinata felt Sasuke slowing to a stop just before he shouted, "Wait!" Another few moments of awkward fumbling and he said, panting, "Here."
"Um...thank you. This way, please," responded a startled female voice. Hinata had to assume that it belonged to the person accepting boarding passes because, seconds later, Sasuke began to move again and they passed through a heavy metal door and emerged into a long, stark hallway.
There wasn't much scenery on the last leg of their trip, only an extended stretch of dirty blue carpeting and the heels of Sasuke's brown leather loafers as they scurried forward. She could both hear and feel her captor's chest heaving with the exertion of carrying both her and the luggage across the tarmac and, despite her normally friendly feelings toward her classmates, Hinata couldn't help but feel he deserved to struggle a little bit.
Feeling very much like a kidnapped princess waiting for a mushroom-loving plumber to come rescue her, the Hyuuga heiress began begging again. "S-Sasuke-san...please, p-put me down..."
"Almost there..."
"P-Please...m-my stomach hurts..."
Surprisingly, Sasuke responded to her pleas and, with a struggling grunt, began to lower her gently to the floor. Her toes touched the stiff carpeting a few moments later and, with her captor there to steady her, she managed to regain her own balance swiftly.
"Come on," Sasuke commanded, reaching out and taking a firm hold of her wrist. Hinata had no chance to protest or even catch her breath as he whisked her off again, this time allowing her to stumble along behind him on her own two feet.
The pace the Uchiha prodigy set was quick and difficult to keep up with. Hinata bumbled and tripped a few times before finally reaching the threshold of the actual airplane. They made it there just as the door was beginning to shut.
"Hey!" Sasuke called out, pounding his free fist on the door with only a slim crack left open.
A flight attendant pulled the door back, peeked out, and commented, "You just made it. Come on in." She stepped inside and out of their way to let them pass through.
Huffing only a little still, Sasuke thanked her and tugged sharply on Hinata's arm. They both entered the plane together and began struggling their way down the cramped aisle of seats. Peeking over Sasuke's shoulder, she noted that 12A was near the back of the cabin, right next to the lavatories.
"Omigod," a relieved-sounding voice commented. It was one of Sasuke's many nameless fangirls and she was standing to greet her crush with a gigantic, lipgloss-slathered smile from her seat. A number of other female students were leaning in from all sides to welcome Sasuke aboard, as well. "We were starting to worry that you'd gotten left behind! Iruka-sensei was about to send someone to look for you."
"Hn," Sasuke replied. With another yank on Hinata's arm, he dragged her further up the aisle and away from his cloying fanclub members. As they passed, the heiress noted how the fangirl's eyes latched on to the way Sasuke was clinging to her arm. Her painted smile drooped a little.
"Sasuke-kun!"
"Sasuke, sweetums!"
This time, Ino and Sakura were both out of their seats, stumbling over the person in between them to reach Sasuke. They struggled across the lap of the person trapped in the middle, scratching adn clawing at each other as they did so. Sasuke took no notice of them at all.
The heiress looked back, pitying them for Sasuke's inattention, and her heart seized. Naruto was caught between the two bickering girls while they attempted to dig their manicured nails into each other's faces. "Augh! Geeze, cut it out, would ya? Hey – !"
"Get out of my way, Ino-pig!"
"You're the one in the aisle seat, bilboard-brow! You get out of my way!"
"So you can attack Sasuke-kun with your totally fake – Aiie! That hurts!"
"No hair pulling!"
Iruka-sensei, their care-worn chaperone, lept to Uzumaki's rescue and tried to force Ino and Sakura back into their seats before the situation evolved into anything worse. The flight attendant at the top of the aisle stopped in the middle of her safety instructions and stared as the battle unfolded. Their second chaperone, Kakashi-sensei, ignored the scene and flipped another page in his book. There was a rosy tint to his cheeks as his eyes scanned the text.
Hinata eyes were still fixed on the war waging at the front of the plane when Sasuke made a full stop in the aisle. As a result, she collided with the Uchiha's back and nearly fell over backwards (again). How many times was she going to fall today? She was already bruised like an overipe fruit.
Sasuke didn't seem to notice the Hyuuga heiress' bumbling. "Do you want the window seat?"
"H-Huh?"
"The window seat," Sasuke repeated, drawing his words out slowly this time. Hinata stared at him, blinking dumbly as she tried to process his question. "Do you want it?"
"I th-thought you were sitting with Sakura-san and Ino-san?" Hinata pointed out, still baffled at the seating arrangements. Behind her, Ino and Sakura were still flinging childish insults at one another. She jumped and turned to observe when one of them screamed.
"Just wait! I'll throw you out of the plane into the ocean!"
"Try it, monkey-face!"
"For the love of – ouch! Stop it! I'm calling both of your parents as soon as – put that down!"
Some of the boys near the front of the plane had started chanting "Fight, fight, fight, fight!" while Iruka lifted Ino bodily off of Sakura and dragged her up the aisle. Naruto squatted down hold down his pink-haired crush when she showed signs of trying to follow.
A little perturbed at the scene, Hinata returned her attention to Sasuke, who, after finally releasing her arm, shrugged the carry-on luggage off of his shoulders and began stowing it in their overhead bin. He (while continuing to ignore the turmoil up front) explained simply, "I switched with the dobe. I didn't want to be trapped between those two" – he paused to nod up at the front where Ino was being deposited into a seat next to Shikimaru; the boy in question snorted awake when the flailing girl was practically thrown into his lap – "for fourteen hours. Naruto has a thing for Sakura, so we swapped. Now, do you want the window seat or not?"
Hinata's cheeks flamed up again at the mention of Naruto's infatuation with Sakura. Though Sasuke couldn't possibly have known about the heiress' secret feelings, it was hard to immediately forgive him for pointing out something that she preferred not to acknowledge.
Nodding silently, Hinata brushed past Sasuke and settled into the seat next to the window. Outside the plane, hazy gray clouds were beginning to form in the sky. Maybe this trip wouldn't be so much fun, after all.
Sasuke plopped down into the aisle seat – a good distance away from Hinata, who didn't seem to be in the mood for closer proximity – just as the "fasten seatbelts" sign flickered on. It flashed several times with a "ping, ping, ping."
Sasuke groped around behind him for the safety harness, but wasn't having any luck locating it. The sign beeped more insistently as the engines began to rev and vibrate beneath them.
"Damn it," the Uchiha swore, standing and swirling around for a better look. No seatbelt.
"Please take your seat, sir," a flight attendant warned. It was the same one who had announced the safety instructions and she looked pretty grim. Sasuke's best guess was that she didn't want anymore catastrophe's after that squabble between Ino and Sakura. "We're taking off."
Sasuke waved at her to signal that he understood. "Hang on. I can't find my - "
"Now, sir."
Grumbling, Sasuke shifted his line of sight to the seat next to him, the one in the middle. There was a seatbelt in that one.
Turning back around so that he could collapse into the plush cushions, Sasuke lowered himself down and strapped in. He could feel Hinata inching away from him and promised himself to move over once they were in the air.
Closing his eyes tight and digging his blunt nails into the armrests, Sasuke braced himself for takeoff. No big deal.
The plane shuddered and jerked as it started moving away from the safety of the airport terminal. Sasuke rationalized that these contraptions probably did that all the time, that it meant nothing and that he was perfectly safe, but the rough beginning left him with a feeling of unease. If this thing was so unsturdy on the ground, how would it hold up in the air?
The Uchiha forced these thoughts to the furthest corners of his mind and drew in a deep breath to calm himself. He just had to focus, that was all. Focus on the soft hum of the engines...the quiet murmurings of the people around him...Hinata's steady breathing...the beeping sign...the groaning metal...that horribly chilling squeal of the gears...
"S-Sasuke-san? Are you alright?"
"Fine," Sasuke replied, though his fisted hands trembled visibly. He struggled to refocus his mind on something more calming. When the wheels hit something, causing the plane to jump a little, he tried to ignore the way his organs squirmed inside him. "Just...relaxing."
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, in, out, in, out, in, out...
"Are...are you sure you're okay? You're b-breathing a little hard..."
Sasuke wanted to reply, but found his tongue suddenly seized and immobile; the nose of the plane was tipping upwards.
Oh, gods. This was it.
On instinct, Sasuke reached out and grabbed hold of the closest living thing for support. He heard Hinata "eep" quietly as his clammy palm squeezed her hand and held on. The Uchiha's tension was rising with every invisible step the plane seemed to climb. It was too late to turn back.
Finally, the plane leveled out and the turbulence lessened. They were in the air.
Author's Note: Hahaha...I love it when guys have little phobias. It's sort of cute.
Self-beta'd.
. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) .
– Love can be black and white. SasuHina