Summary: A collection of drabbles written for GaaSaku Month, a prompt for every day of the month.
Day: 4
Prompt: Alternate Universe
Phrase: …he was exactly the type she had taught herself to avoid, the embodiment of everything she knew was bad for her…
Genre: General/Mystery
Length: 796 words
Rating: K
I must really love the college setting...
31 Ways to Love
By: Socially Suicidal
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto
Sakura had always considered herself to be a smart girl. She had always been at the top of her class academically and had handled all of the obstacles of her personal life thus far with surprising calculation and reason despite her tendency to get emotional. She could compete with even the likes of Nara Shikamaru in shogi and match wits with even the likes of Hyuga Neji. Her medical skills were coming along at a rapid pace, and all of her professors knew that she would surpass them before she graduated from college next year.
All in all, she was a pretty smart girl and felt justified in priding herself in that.
So she felt no qualms about walking cross-campus from the library to her suite that night. Konoha had a reputation for being relatively safe, although not as safe as to warrant a petite pink-headed student to be completely alone outside at this hour of the night, but she felt confident just the same. The campus was relatively well-lit and it was a chilly March evening, no one would be around.
Lost in thoughts about the upcoming research project she had spent the better half of the night preparing for, Sakura didn't feel the withering gaze on her until the smell of cigarette smoke wafted into her nose. Her face crumpled with distaste and she halted her steps, head swiveling as she looked for the source of the offensive odor. When she found it, she resisted the urge to curse herself for not noticing him a few meters away, seated underneath a lamppost.
She knew him. He had spent the first week of the semester coming in ridiculously late to her sociology class. After that first week, he had stopped bothering to show up. The class went on smoothly without him and she had forgotten about her unpleasant looking classmate promptly.
That was the only time she had seen him since, but he was ridiculously conspicuous with that wild red mop of spikes and those even more wild green eyes. And here he was, at whatever ridiculous hour of the morning in the middle of the campus, gesturing her over to him.
He was exactly the type she had taught herself to avoid, the reckless, dangerous type, the embodiment of everything she knew was bad for her, and in that moment, despite her self-preservation and all of the calculated assertions she had made about him, she was complying. She was walking toward him.
He was smirking wickedly.
That probably should have been the tell-tale sign for her to turn and run and not look back. But she didn't. She stopped before him and stared down at him.
Wordlessly, he pulled something out of his sweatshirt pocket and held it up to her. It took her a moment to realize he was offering her a cigarette. The chemical makeup and medical repercussions of the vice swarming her thoughts, she took it from his hand and dropped her book filled bag to the side, carefully folding her legs under her as she sat next to him. She broke her eyes from his and stared at the small object in between her fingers.
It had no label and the formerly pristine paper was crinkled and abused. There was no telling what sorts of things it had gone through to appear that way. Sakura jumped when his frigid hand wrapped around her wrist and pulled her hand to his mouth. He dipped his head forward and pressed the end of his cigarette to hers. She watched him closely.
She didn't smoke; she had never tried it based on solemn knowledge of its harmful effects and had steered clear of those who did because of full-fledged revulsion for the habit. But the way the cancerous stick was perched sinfully between his pale lips was an invitation, a challenge even, and Sakura was hard-pressed to decline when presented with a challenge.
She lifted it to her lips and inhaled steadily.
She heaved a cough immediately after and he chuckled at her expense, blowing his own smoke out through his nostrils. She realized then that he was watching her as closely as she had him.
The way he was smirking told her that he knew exactly what he was doing, what kind of girl she was and, despite that, what he had gotten her to do. He knew it and he was absolutely elated by it.
Taking another careful drag, delighted that it caused no ill effect beside a slightly dizzying lightheadedness, Sakura held his gaze and thought perhaps now was as good time a time as any to ask his name.
It was Gaara, he told her, and the rest of the night floated away like a tendril of cigarette smoke.
