The Social Scene
Chapter 7
Can't rely on my heart to beat it,
'Cause you take part of it every evening,
Take words out of my mouth just from breathing
- Ed Sheeran
"Sakura, you've passed the test. You're now my new artistic muse."
"...WHAT?"
She couldn't help the uncharacteristic scream escape her, as she indignantly stared open-mouthed at Gaara. "What test? I thought I wasn't committing myself to anything! You did not tell me about a test! And how in the hell have I passed?"
Much to Sakura's annoyance, Gaara kept a firm smirk plastered to his face as he watched her freak out. "Well... it wasn't a test per se. But anyways, all that matters is that you passed. Congratulations."
Sakura glared at him so ominously that he swore he could feel her eyes burning a hole right though his head. However, he simply ignored her as he walked stoically over to his kitchen island and sat on the high stool. A MacBook was waiting for him on the table and he flipped it open, connecting his camera to the USB cable.
"Gaara!" she whined, coming up behind him. "I don't want to be your muse! I'm not a model! And I look ugly in photos!" She knew she sounded like a spoilt brat but how else was she going to try and get the message through to Gaara?
"I beg to differ, Sakura," he said, spinning around in his stool to face her, before lifting the laptop off the desk and shoving the screen right in front of her face. At first, she didn't know what she was looking at, but soon the pixels evaporated into one another and the image became clear as day. It was her.
His finger lazily tapped through them all, until it came to the last one - the one which Gaara had taken right before she had landed on top of him. The photo showed her in mid-flight from his perspective. Her eyes were lit up with a feral glow to them and her hair looked like it was hung from invisible wires, standing right on end. However, the rest of her face seemed scarily serene – her jaw was relaxed, yet her body language spoke otherwise. Her hand was reaching out towards the lens, tensed like a talon. If it had been anyone but her in that photo, she would have thought it was a beautifully captured moment.
Gaara lingered on this photo, raising an eyebrow at her. "What do you think now, Miss. Haruno?"
She finally tore her eyes away from the laptop as she looked up at him with a steely glare. "I think you cheated."
"What?"
"That's right. You cheated. You coaxed me into relaxation, putting on Nirvana - my weak spot. Then you provoked me and had me running around your whole apartment. And then finally, you purposely jumped over your couch, knowing that I would follow and be lured into your trap, just to take that photo! And I was completely unaware of your cunning antics!"
He chuckled before shaking his head in denial. "I didn't cheat. This photo right here," he said, pointing to his laptop screen, "This is 100% you."
She gave him a sceptical look, raising a neat eyebrow.
"Sakura, you know what I always like to say - anyone can model... as long as there's a photographer who likes them."
She gave him another hard look, internally weighing out the pros and cons...
Con: she hated cameras and the feeling of constantly being watched.
Pro: she would be majorly helping a friend out, if Gaara could be called a friend...
Con: if it all failed, she would be eternally humiliated.
Pro: she would get to see Gaara more, including his hot body which she could now confirm was six-pack endowed from their earlier run-in...
Whoa, wait. She did not just think that. She always secretly knew that she had a dirty mind but to waste it on a guy like Gaara, whom she had the worst first impression of, made her cringe and blush in embarrassment.
She shook her head of all the other weird thoughts going through her mind at that moment and looked back at him, noting the subtle desperation and anticipation in his eyes for her to say yes – and so she found it increasingly difficult to decline him of his wish.
"Fine," she said, placing her hands on her hips. But before she even had time to note her conditions to this agreement, she felt herself being lifted off the ground and spun around in wild circles as she squealed with an excited kind of terror. "Gaara! Put me down!" she shouted in an uncharacteristic, high-pitched tone.
Finally, he put her down, grinning at her as he did so. With his hands still firmly on her waist, he pecked her on the cheek on a sudden impulse. "You're a babe," he said, as he smirked at her blush, which she found increasingly hard to control recently.
"But be honest with me," she said with a pout. "If I do something wrong, just tell me straight, okay?"
"Have more faith in yourself," he said simply, as he finally let go of her to get himself a glass of water from his kitchen sink.
She sighed, as she whimsically glanced at her wristwatch. She winced when she realised the time, noting that she had been at his apartment for longer than she had intended. "I should probably go now, Gaara."
He nodded at her and told her that he would ring her when he needed her for some more photos. Nodding, she grabbed her bag before heading out of his apartment.
.&.
There was a knocking at the door which Sakura was going to ignore, but found increasingly hard to when it turned into furious banging. She was tucked warmly under the duvet, five hundred miles deep in slumber and found it difficult to concentrate on her magnificent dreams of unicorns and floating lollipops, as the knocking became louder and more insistent.
Groaning, Sakura tossed to turn her back on the door, where the noise was filtering through. Burying her head in the cushion, she was still unsuccessful in drowning out the noise. When her patience was hanging on its last thread, she finally threw her duvet off her with a frustrated growl, glancing at the clock and moaning even more when she saw the digits flashing at her: 3:54am.
Wobbling as she got to her feet and stumbling towards her front door, she took a cautious look through the peephole, almost crying out in anger when she saw who stood on the opposite side of the door.
"Mother fucker," she spat out, as she opened the door with her unruly pink hair, donned only in a pair of immodest pyjama shorts and a tight tank top. Not bothering to cover herself up, she glared at the intruder with as much hate as she could muster at so early in the morning. "What the fuck do you want?"
Sasuke Uchiha simply crossed his arms as he leant against her door frame with a wicked spark in his eyes and his clothes – a once sharp black suit – messed and wrinkled. His tie was loosened, his shirt only half tucked-in and his suit jacket slung lazily over his shoulder.
"Hey, Saku," he slurred, using a nickname which she had only heard her mother use on her.
She growled at him as he suddenly entered her apartment, not even waiting for an invitation before he stepped through her threshold. She watched in utter stun as he strutted in like he owned the place, the cheeky bastard!
As he walked past her, however, she caught a whiff of the odour permeating off his clothes and his breath. It smelt a lot like the strong, bitter taste of Absolut.
"Are... Are you drunk?" spluttered Sakura, grabbing onto his shoulder, spinning him around to face her.
When he struggled to find his footing, uncontrollably stumbling over his own feet, he pretty much answered her question. He simply chuckled and wriggled out of her grip, wondering over to her kitchen and raiding her fridge, much to her annoyance.
"Sasuke! Get the fuck out of my fridge and get the fuck out of my apartment!" she shouted in aggravation, stalking over to him to slam the fridge shut, away from his prying, hungry hands.
"Sakuraaa," he whined, almost uncharacteristically if there wasn't a small inkling of his arrogant smirk which followed it, "you're no fun."
She gritted her teeth, her patience hanging on by a fibre of a thread. "I don't have to be fun at 4 in the morning, Sasuke," she all but spat out his name, as she recited the line with a forced politeness that could hopefully get the hate-filled message which lay underneath her words to him in his drunken state.
But it was to no avail as he practically ignored her. It was only then that he noticed her attire – or lack of. He drove his eyes over her form as she felt her jaw drop from his ability to be so crude. His eyes lit up as they roved her body, finally landing on her face. And with a lazy smirk, he raised his eyebrows up at her with a suggestive wink.
She suddenly felt extremely self-conscious, as she crossed her arms over her chest. Quickly spotting a thick-knitted, long cardigan slung over the back of her couch, she quickly put it on, buttoning it up.
Venomously, she glared at him, silently warning that if he dared to lay a hand on her, she would cut out his intestines and wrap them round his throat.
"Why are you here?" she continued to ask, dodging around him to get a glass of water from her tap. She leant against her kitchen island, curiously inspecting for a reaction from him whilst calmly sipping on her drink.
He simply leant against the counter opposite her, whilst nonchalantly fingering the hem of his shirt. He shrugged his shoulders in reply to her question. "I... don't really know. Got drunk with Naruto and before you know it, here I am."
She scoffed at his reply which she just wouldn't accept as an excuse. "You got drunk with Naruto? Alone? Just the two of you?" He must have been pretty desperate to do something on a Friday night if he stayed in with only one of his best friends to drown their sorrows.
He shrugged again, replying, "Yeah, just the two of us... and six strippers - but that's really not important," he said, calmly dismissing the last little fact like he was talking about the weather forecast.
Her eyes involuntarily widened before she shook her head in disbelief. "You're impossible, Uchiha."
He ignored her as he began snooping through her cupboards looking for something that wasn't water, milk, juice, tea or coffee – essentially, he was looking for some booze.
"That still doesn't answer my question though – why are you here?"
"Why not?" he answered back vaguely, still sifting through her cupboards.
By now, Sakura had grown tired of his little smart remarks. Angrily, she shut the cupboard which he had just opened, and kept her arm above his head as she moved closer to threaten him into submission.
"Listen here, Uchiha," she gritted out, as Sasuke turned around to face her with a foreign startled expression on his face. "Let's get one thing clear here. You're currently in my apartment, in my kitchen, looking through my cupboards at 4oclock in the fucking morning. At the moment, I'm too frustrated and sleep-deprived to even try to kick you out. So instead, I at least expect a little back in return if you expect to steal my alcohol," she threatened as she grabbed behind him to a cupboard and gripped a bottle of cheap vodka by its neck, without even breaking eye-contact with the bewildered Uchiha. "Answer. My. Questions," she ground out, holding up the bottle of alcohol in front of his face, as if to tease him.
His eyes widened when they caught onto the bottle like a love stuck puppy. She waved it in front of his face, amused at how his eyes followed its movement.
God, if only a sober Sasuke could see himself right now from outside his body. She chuckled inwardly, but didn't lose her tough facade. "Now, Uchiha, why the fuck are you here?"
He eventually gave up his fight for the bottle when she hid it behind her back, falling for her cunning ways. Deciding that the alcohol was worth his dignity, he answered her question, letting his tongue run a bit wild from his drunken state. "I didn't want any part in Naruto or his strippers. Getting drunk with him was my idea, but the strippers were completely his," he admitted. "That's why I left and ended up coming... here," he said, waving his arms and gesturing to his apartment.
Sakura was truly baffled. Was he joking or was he actually being serious? Sakura honestly couldn't tell. The Sasuke Uchiha which she had heard shit about would want to stay with the strippers to have a good time. The Sasuke Uchiha in front of her seemed to enjoy her company more than paid whores... odd.
"So my house is now a refuge for a fugitive hoping to get away from his best friend and six strippers?"
When he didn't reply and only gave her a look that said everything she didn't want to hear, she simply sighed in defeat, her tensed shoulders deflating like balloons. "Alright, Uchiha, you're off the hook." Before he could even grin in succession, she turned swiftly back into her evil side, reciting with practiced ease, "But try anything to test my patience again and I'll cut you up like a fucking piece of meat, you got it?"
Her warning went unheeded as he simply nodded his head, grabbed the vodka bottle out of her loosened grip and walked straight past her to crash on her sofa. He didn't even look fazed at her violent, bossy tendencies when she was grated the wrong way, which annoyed Sakura even more. But ignoring the voices in her mind to fucking shred him up, she went to actually join Sasuke on her sofa, pushing his legs off half of it and making some space for her to sit comfortably.
"You know, it wouldn't be so hard to actually take your shoes off when you walk into someone's apartment," she scolded, but in a less threatening tone than before. She looked at him with a glare that he should now proceed to take his shoes off.
However, instead, he leant with his back against the arm rest and then had the audacity to prop his legs on her lap. Wiggling his feet, he silently signalled for her to be his own little slave and take his leather brogues off for him.
"You're fucking kidding me, right?" she said, glaring at him even harder, whilst he simply smirked at her with a persuasive tilt of his head. Eventually, she gave in with a frustrated little cry and continued to roughly undo his shoelaces on each foot, yanking his shoe off and throwing it to the other side of his apartment. "Happy?" she asked sarcastically.
However, sarcasm wasn't something that registered in the drunken Sasuke's mind. "Very," he smugly replied, getting comfortable on her sofa, now only donning a pair of socks on his feet. He didn't remove his legs from her lap, but she didn't do anything to push him off either. She could see his hands resting behind his head, as his eyes slowly shut. She couldn't help but to gaze upon his serene features, really taking in for the first time how handsome he really was. The contours of his face looked like they were carved from stone and a perfect replication of a Greek god.
"Like what you see?" Sasuke suddenly asked, cracking one eye open to examine Sakura's flushed face at being caught. He smirked at this, appreciating how he could make her blush such a vicious pink. All of a sudden, he had a cracking idea to pull her into him. Sakura suddenly squealed when she felt his hand tug on her arm and she was suddenly falling right into his chest. He put a protective arm around her, their legs tangling up in each other, so that it was almost impossible to tell which limb was whose.
Her face suddenly flared up in a surge of temperature. Her body tensed against his, and although Sasuke could blatantly feel this, he ignored her discomfort and simply hugged her tighter, revelling in her body warmth.
Another bright idea sparked in Sasuke's mind, as the one hand which gripped the bottle of alcohol wrapped tighter around Sakura's tiny waist.
"Want to play a game?" he asked from below her form.
She popped her head up to look at him with a curious expression, her attention piqued at his proposal.
Taking this as a sign to continue, he went on to elaborate: "We take turns asking each other questions about anything and everything. If you refuse to answer seriously and honestly, then you take a shot." He held up the bottle of cheap vodka in his hands to further explain with a wicked glint in his eyes.
Her face suddenly lit up in a huge Cheshire grin, liking where this was going. "Alright," she eagerly agreed, loving the thought of a challenge and a way to dig into Sasuke's personal life.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Sasuke noticed that Sakura's body had relaxed considerably and now she was simply lying on his chest, like she was meant to be there all along. Her fingers were even tracing an Aztec pattern all over his shirt, sending pleasurable fissions running along in his chest.
"I'll start," Sakura said, "What is your ultimate guilty pleasure?"
He hummed a little in thought, before replying with no restraint, "The Lion King."
Sakura scrunched up her nose at this, before bursting into a fit of giggles. "You are such a sap, Sasuke Uchiha! Do we have a closet Disney fan over here, ladies and gentlemen?" she asked to no one in particular as she burst into another laughing fit.
Sasuke calmly ignored her, unfazed in his drunken state. "My turn. What colour panties are you wearing?"
Sakura's laughter immediately died, as the colour instantly rose to her cheeks. "I am not answering that, you little fucked up pervert!" she objected, crossing her arms over her chest.
Sasuke gave her a cheeky smirk before thrusting the bottle towards her. "Bottoms up," he smugly said.
Sakura glared at him, already disliking the direction that this game was heading. She snatched the bottle out of his hands nevertheless, unscrewing the lid and tilting her head right back to shoot the vodka straight down her throat. An approximation of a shot worth was enough to have her spluttering and coughing at the bitterness, burning her throat and making her eyes tear up.
"Bleurgh!" she expressed, squeezing her eyes shut and swallowing continuously to try and get the wretched taste off her tongue.
Sasuke simply chuckled, but his mirth was short-lived, as Sakura continued the game.
"What do you fear most in the whole world?"
Sakura could tell this touched a personal spot, by the pained expression which hid in those deep onyx eyes of his. She was about to hand him back the bottle and tell him to drink up, but the alcohol he had consumed with Naruto had loosened his tongue. Had he been sober, Sasuke probably wouldn't have told a single soul of all these confessions...
"My older brother," he muttered unintelligently. It was quiet and Sakura strained to hear it, but when she did, her brows involuntarily knitted together in confusion.
"Your brother?" She remembered reading an article somewhere which stated that the oldest Uchiha sibling had run off to pursue a career in music, and thus, the title of the heir of the Uchiha Industries fell into the hands of Sasuke. If he had run away, most likely far from the reaches of Tokyo, why was Sasuke still afraid of him?
As if reading her mind, Sasuke elaborated further: "His band has an exclusive record contract with Sony Music and before long, he'll have singles and albums out. He'll fucking rise to prominence and then my dad will realise that Itachi's power is thrice as influential as mine, even as heir to his business. And then before you know it, I'll be out of my dad's good books and pushed aside like garbage. It's always been like that," he explained, his teeth gritted in evident anger.
Sakura couldn't help but to sympathise with him. His father's full attention on Itachi for most of Sasuke's childhood had left the younger Uchiha to feel neglected and worthless. Sakura wasn't surprised at his fury and his apparent jealousy. In fact, if it was her, she would have been livid.
"So..." she started tentatively, "...You fear him because his band will soon be able to overpower you. Your father will see this and then..." she hesitated here, stalling on what exactly his dad will do once this happens.
Sasuke thankfully finished her sentence for her. "And then he'll give the title of heir back to Itachi and I'll be left with nothing."
His face turned stony and cold in a moment as he uttered those words. His whole body had tensed beneath her, and his bruising grip around her waist tightened considerably.
Without even thinking, Sakura's fingers had crawled round to where his hand lay on her body. She gripped onto it, squeezing gently in a comforting manner. As her hands entwined with his, he looked down at her, startled at the sudden show of affection, but she only smiled up at him genially. The warmth from her hand on his seeped through his skin and coursed through his bloodstream and he couldn't help but to smile gently back at her.
The rest of the night was spent finishing their game, each drinking enough shots to put an elephant to sleep and finding out more and more about each other. However, Sakura just drank that one extra sip which sent her careening into the deep recess of unconsciousness, as she passed out on Sasuke's chest. Seeing her breathing slowly start to grow heavier and more paced, he soon followed after her, closing his eyes and revelling in the foreign body warmth which emitted from the pink-haired girl sprawled out on top of him.
Oh my god, I end up finding so much on Facey-b that there's really no point in any other url except that one. It's like birthdays, deaths, gossip - like what the hell? Society is so messed up.
And YES, THIS IS STILL A SASUxSAKU ROMANCE! Don't be deceived! I got so much grief on how it seemed like I was fixing Sakura up with Gaara, but no! I'm not too sure of how Sasuke and Sakura will come together in the end, but they will!
Also, trust me to get ill when I finally have a one week break from school, it's so typical :/
And I'll end for today with a cheeky link to my new blog, if you're interested in fashion, beauty, random posts about gorgeous people, or just generally bored and need a new read:
fashionbreakfastclub . wordpress . com (without the spaces)
