Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I do however own two bottles of wine which I am going to drink because TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY.
The Boys Next Door
Chapter 10
Metamorphosis
I snapped my head up and tried to gauge what he'd meant by his question. Thankfully, Sasuke wasn't looking at me, because I could feel myself flushing as my heart pounded.
I was attracted to Sasuke. This was undeniably true. Not as much as I was attracted to Itachi, but still. Sasuke was incredibly attractive, and so sweet and fun, teaching me how to drive, tangling with me as we tried to switch seats in the truck. And carrying me on his back. I especially enjoyed that part. So what did he mean by his question? Did he mean why does it have to be Itachi instead of me? And if he did… No, of course he didn't. Sasuke was in love with Hinata. And he hated Itachi. He probably meant it as why are you stuck on Itachi of all people? Sasuke didn't like me that way.
And of course, I didn't like Sasuke that way either. I mean, flirting with him was fun, but I had to remember that I was on a mission here and what my objectives were. It wouldn't do to lose sight of my goal now that I was so close. I decided to come clean to Sasuke about my whole mission, because I felt he deserved that much.
Why does it have to be Itachi… I munched on a French fry, deep in thought.
I remembered during the school year, watching Itachi walk into the cafeteria with the two most popular girls in school on either of his arms. People were calling to him from all over the room, trying to get his attention. Hoping, like me, that he would direct his radiance in their direction for 5 heavenly seconds. "Itachi lights up a room."
Sasuke still wouldn't look at me. He was focusing on our tray of French fries. "I can see how you would want to talk to him, maybe even be friends with him. But not why you'd want to get together with him. Itachi is like the sun. The farther away you are from it, the more inviting it seems. But you can't get too close, or you'll be burned up in an instant." He snapped his fingers, as if to emphasize his point.
"I can understand your point," I said. "But I don't think you or anyone else can talk me out of it. I've wanted this for so long…"
"More like always," Sasuke muttered, shoving another handful of fries in his mouth.
"Almost always. Actually, I can remember the exact day it started." The mud field in front of me dissolved into a sun-speckled view of the lake through shady branches. The roar of trucks faded into the sound of birds chirping, and my mother's voice. "It was before Mom died. Your family and my family were all out in the backyard, for a cookout I think. We were all really little, but I remember it so clearly. Mom wouldn't let me play with you boys, as usual, so I had to stay up on the deck with her and your mom as they chatted."
"I wasn't even really paying attention until I heard my name come up. Your mom was going on about how sweet and lady-like I was, and she told Mom that I was welcome to come over and play with you guys and Naruto whenever I wanted. I remember holding my breath, waiting for my mom's answer. All I'd ever wanted was to be able to play with you all."
"Why?"
I started. I had almost forgotten that Sasuke was there. He was staring at me intently, waiting for me to continue.
"Why what?" I asked, confused.
"Why did you want to play with us?" Sasuke put his hand on my knee. "At that stage all we really did was run around shooting each other in the face with water guns."
"Compare that to sitting in your room alone, dressing and undressing a Barbie."
"Oh." He nodded.
"But I was disappointed yet again. Mom said that your mother was nice for inviting me, but that she didn't want me to spend too much time playing with you all, for fear that I would turn into a tomboy."
"What's wrong with being a tomboy?"
"It's fine until a certain age. Actually, it's more like an advantage. You can run and pitch and catch just as well as any of the boys, and beat girls like Hana and Anko and Hinata," Here I burst out laughing, remembering a particularly violent game of Little League softball from way back in the day. "You can beat girls like that in almost any sport imaginable. But then as you grow older, people don't really know what to do with a tomboy anymore. And you just end up confused and alone."
There were those cute little frown lines again. Sasuke moved the tray of fries from between us and scooted over until his leg was pressed up against mine, his hand still on my knee. I took a shaky breath and went on, bolstered by his silent support. "Just as my mom was telling your mom no, Itachi ran up the stairs crying. You and the other boys had dared him to stick a breadstick between his toes and put his foot in the lake. A fish mouthed him and he freaked out."
"Er–" Sasuke started.
I shushed him – this was the most important part of the story. "I remember my mother grabbing his face between her hands and turning it toward me. She said 'Look at those eyes. You can tell he's going to be a heartbreaker.'" I smiled at the memory of Itachi's little tear-stained face looking at my mother in confusion. But when I turned and I saw the look on Sasuke's face, I immediately stopped smiling.
"That sounds like a bad thing," he grumbled.
"People mean it as a good thing," I said, suddenly not as sure of this memory as I had been for the past (almost) sixteen years. "Then my mom turned to me and said, 'Oh Sakura, just wait until you're sixteen.' She was all about my sixteenth birthday. Her parents had thrown her an amazing party with a huge cake and given her a beautiful grown-up ring, along with a dress that I still have hanging in my closet. She wanted my sixteenth to be as magical as hers."
"Are you going to wear it?" We had sort of moved off the topic of Itachi, so Sasuke was calming down. Talking about Itachi around Sasuke was like throwing an aerosol can in a fire.
"Hell no," I laughed. "That dress is like, 100% polyester. Highly flammable. You wouldn't be able to put me within 100 feet of a birthday candle."
Sasuke smirked. "You should wear it for the wakeboarding show." Now we both laughed.
"You do know that we would probably be the only ones laughing if I actually did that in the show, right?" Clearly our terrible senses of humour were the basis of our friendship.
"What does any of this have to do with Itachi?"
I squirmed a little under his gaze. I felt like he could see right through me with those intense, dark eyes. And I also felt his disapproval, even though I hadn't given him anything to disapprove of yet. But I had vowed to tell him everything. I took a deep breath. "My mom died not too long after that. And I kind of took it as a free pass to Disneyland. Yay, Mom wasn't around to tell me not to play with the boys! I always felt guilty that I was even the slightest bit happy that my mom wasn't around anymore. And I felt bad that I never told Dad or Shizune about Mom not wanting me to play with you boys. I went against her wishes for me. So I promised myself that I would clean up my act by the time I turned sixteen. And if I could convince Itachi to ask me out, I would know that I had turned out alright after all."
Sasuke nodded. "Because you think your mother picked him for you."
"No, not exactly–"
"Like an arranged marriage," Sasuke interrupted. "That's very forward thinking."
"No, not like that. I just feel like my mother knew what was best for me, and I know that if she were still here, she would be helping me go out and get it. But she's not here, so I'm kind of trying to figure everything out for myself. And I feel like if I can transform myself enough and get Itachi to ask me out by my birthday, that I wouldn't be disappointing my mom. I feel like she would be proud of watching me change from an ugly duckling to a beautiful swan. But there's still so much work that needs to be done, and sometimes I wonder how I'm ever going to be ready…"
"Sakura–"
"I've almost perfected my Anko/Hana impression. Or at least I thought I had, until this whole mud riding thing happened."
"You think that going out with Itachi will turn you into Hana Inuzuka?"
"No, that's not what I meant. I just feel like if Itachi were to go out with me, everyone would look at me differently, you know? They'd think that maybe they'd overlooked something special in me, if Itachi wanted to be with me. And then I would be that girl. I know you hate Itachi, but you understand why everyone else loves him right?"
I took Sasuke's stony silence as a yes.
"I mean, boyfriend/girlfriend love is different than brotherly love, but how would you feel if you knew that Itachi loved and valued you as a person?"
"I would know that Armageddon was coming, and I would prepare myself for the locusts."
"I'm serious. Just standing in his aura… I mean, it's one thing to be friends or acquaintances with him. But if he loved you…"
I felt Sasuke shift, and thought for sure that he was about to stand up and stalk away in disgust. Instead, he put his arm around my shoulders and started tracing shapes on my upper arm, causing shivers to race down my back.
"Every word out of Itachi's mouth is meant to hurt me. It's been like that ever since the moment I was born. Did you know that when we were little, Itachi used to stand by my crib and throw blocks at me? Shisui told me. So no, I really have no idea what you mean about Itachi loving you, because he has always hated me." I almost laughed at the ridiculous of the situation, and the fact that Sasuke was still holding a grudge about this sixteen years later, but I managed to refrain. I believed him. I knew Itachi.
"I'm sorry that he treats you that way, but he doesn't treat me that way. And I'm the one that wants to get together with him."
"He will," Sasuke said. "If you let him get close enough." The soft shapes he had been tracing became harsher now, with a lot of sharp, jagged edges.
The tractor arrived just then to pull the pink truck out of the mud. Sasuke took his arm off me – which I probably regretted more than I should have. He leaned forward to watch, probably to make sure that the driver didn't attach the chain to the loose side of the front bumper.
"Why does it have to be Hinata?" I asked.
"It just does," he replied, without taking his eyes off of the tractor.
"You'd probably feel better if you talked about it."
"Hn."
"What do you like so much about her?"
He turned to look at me then, his eyes wide. He seemed almost alarmed, like he had the night before at the tennis courts. His eyes searched mine, looking for something and I probably would have given it to him if I had known what he was looking for. "What are you looking for?"
He blinked and shook his head, turning back to the mud pit. "Nothing. I like Hinata because she's so pretty." He said in his bullshit voice.
"Okay, now that's not fair. I gave you a straight answer about Itachi."
The tractor started forward. The chain attached to the pink truck pulled tighter and tighter, before finally snapping under the pressure. One end of it flew toward the tractor and barely avoided hitting the driver in the head.
"I like her cause she's nice." Sasuke said. "She has a nice rack. I don't know." Now I understood. Clearly it was easier for him to pretend that the ADD had kicked in instead of talking about her. The wound was still too fresh. I knew not to push him anymore.
After two more chains and a rope, the driver finally managed to get the pink truck out of the mud, and Sasuke bought the driver a doughnut. For the next hour and a half, we each took turns driving through the mud pit. And we mostly managed to forget about Itachi and Hinata.
Afterward, we drove into town and hit up all of the teenage haunts – the arcade parking lot, the bowling alley parking lot, and most importantly, the movie theater parking lot. In theory, this is what I had wanted all along – to have a bunch of people see Sasuke and I out together. And, Sasuke had purposefully besmirched Itachi's beloved pink truck with mud. Take that!
We rolled into my driveway with two minutes to spare until my curfew. I was thrilled that he had dropped me off at my house. I'd figured that he would just park over in his driveway, and I would walk home. Itachi truck wasn't in the driveway next door, but I figured that someone else was home, and if they saw us together, they were bound to tell Itachi about it.
Just as I was about to turn to Sasuke to thank him for driving me home, he bailed out the driver's side door, crossing in front of the hood. I'm fairly certain he would have opened my door for me, had I not jumped out at that exact moment. I wasn't used to this seeing this gentlemanly side of Sasuke. It was kind of weirding me out. I hopped out of the truck just as Sasuke reached my side of the truck, and would have fallen flat on my face had he not reached out to stead me at the last minute.
"I'll walk you to the door," he said slowly, as if talking to someone who didn't speak English. Or who didn't go on dates, like, ever. He took my hand. The tree frogs screeched as we walked up the dark path to my front porch. The air was warm, but I found myself shivering. My dad hadn't left the light on, thankfully, so I took a moment to collect myself as we stood there in the dark. I could feel Sasuke standing over me silently, expecting something. I was expecting something too. I don't think I could have taken the disappointment if I walked away from this whole day of hugging and giving each other smouldering looks and everything without something to show for it at the end. Even if we were just friends. But for some reason, my head felt too heavy to lift.
Sasuke put his hand under my chin, and gently tilted my face upward. "If for some reason, one of us were in love with the other, if it were uneven in some way, that would be bad." He gave me a long look that I couldn't really see. The shadows on the porch were too deep. His eyes only glittered a little in the starlight.
I tried to give the look right back to him. "But we're not," I said. What the hell was with the sneakiness in my voice on not? I cleared my throat.
He nodded. "Then we have nothing to worry about."
"Right," I said. And I meant it.
The kiss was simple. He bent down and pressed his lips lightly to mine. The warm summer night continued on around us, yet we stood perfectly still except for his pressure on my lips. But internally, every cell in my body did a back flip to blind.
Eventually, Sasuke pulled back. "Good night, Sakura," he whispered. He ambled back to the pink truck, cranked the engine, and drove one hundred feet to his own driveway. He waved to me briefly before heading inside.
I stayed on the porch for a long time, staring in the direction of his house and telling myself that I did not like Sasuke that way because I liked Itachi and Sasuke liked Hinata and I did not like Sasuke. It was just that Sasuke was like Itachi in the sense that he could make confusing things seem simple and death-defying stunts seem like a good idea.
End of Chapter 10.
This chapter has not been beta-ed, so I apologize for any poorly constructed sentences or other grammatical errors it may contain. I meant to upload this as a quasi-Christmas present to all of you, but I failed. (~ ; 3 ;)~ So here it is as a better-late-than-never-Christmas present slash post in celebration of my birthday!
I hope you all enjoy.
Thanks so much for reading!
xx Bethany