Bad Romance
It was a slow and painful trek home from the hospital. Sakura blinked against the tell-tale blurred vision of chakra-depletion and trudged on mulishly.
The sun sunk low, casting shadows by the time she felt her front door snick closed at her back. Resting for a moment against the cool panel, the pinkette seriously considered sinking to the floor and sleeping where she stood.
Before she could convince herself she pressed away from the tiny entryway and stumbled toward the main room of the flat. Her foggy mind failed to alert her to the nearness of a side table and she earned a nasty bruise over her hip because of it. Cursing against the throb of the oncoming blemish, Sakura tried to dredge up enough energy to obliterate the damned thing. When not so much as a spark of her usual reserve responded to her call, she was not surprised.
She frowned in frustration nonetheless and was distracted with her annoyance when the toe of one sandal caught on a scuff in the hardwood floor. This time she was ill prepared and swayed heavily into the near wall. One shoulder slammed hard into the unforgiving structure as her knees gave way and she found herself crumpled before her dulled senses could react. She vaguely heared a crash that told her she managed to take something to the floor with her but was too exhausted to care.
The last thing she registered before a complete black out is the cool, dusty surface of the floor under her cheek.
It might have been minutes or hours or days later when the sound of rain and a deep, pithy curse woke her. Something wet and cold was pelting the upturned side of her face and she could have sworn she heard a man's voice.
Squinting hard and trying to work past the sleep that deadened her limbs, Sakura began to stir.
Well above her prone position, Sasuke was glowering. His dark eyes flitted over the scene he had come upon with something between disgust and guilt. Sakura was sprawled in the leeway between her main room and bedroom, her deep pink locks haloed against the pale flooring. Nearby the remains of a lamp were shattered beneath a table that was knocked decidedly askew.
Gauging by her reaction time to his proximity to her vulnerable form, she had thoroughly drained herself. Again.
In the recent weeks, Sakura had taken to doubling and tripling her usual hospital rotations. Rather than attend the training sessions scheduled for their newly re-instated team, she had been delving into her medical work. And up until this point, Sasuke's hands had been proverbially tied.
Her life was her own, after all. She was a capable Jounin of twenty. If she wanted to separate herself from her Genin cell, it was her decision. But thiswas unacceptable.
"Annoying little fool," he muttered as he gathered her slowly squirming form from the hardwoods. With a bit of adjusting he managed to drop her shoes to the floor along with her medical pouch and gloves. Shifting until she slipped pliantly against his upper chest, Sasuke side-stepped the pile of discarded clothing and moved toward her sleeping quarters.
Before he had even reached the threshold into the hall, Sakura's strength returned. A deceptively soft sound rippled from her as she flexed but Sasuke was still knocked sharply from his course. Grasping the curve of her shoulder and the tucked contour of the opposite hip, the male managed to maintain a grip on the struggling Sakura.
She in turn was forced to wrap her legs about his waist for leverage. Planting one bare heel against the curve of his lower back, Sakura worked one elbow up until she could drive it into the muscle where his arm met his shoulder. She relished the burn of her overtaxed muscles as she strained more pressure into the counter to his hold.
A deep, angry grunt was all she earned as the Uchiha elected to return in kind. The tension between them was at a crescendo as he dug the fingers of the hand splayed at her hip into the soft curve, his thumb pressing into a sensitive nerve at the top of her leg.
Sakura loosed a muted warrior yell as she shifted again in Sasuke's constricting hold. "I don't want your help!"
She twisted until one hand was struggling to disable the numbing pinch he had on her left thigh. When her efforts proved futile she growled under her breath and flung her weight as sharply as she could to his left in an attempt to disrupt his footing.
Swaying violently under her assault, Sasuke gritted his teeth as his back met the doorframe at the crux between the main room and hall. Dark eyes glared into Sakura's gaze as he snarled, "You cannot walk."
He could hear her teeth click together and watched her lips pull back as she began to route chakra into her arms and legs. Jarring her pointedly, he reminded her, "You don't have the energy to waste."
A sound of pure feminine ire erupted from Sakura. "Then just let go!"
She began to struggle in earnest as the words flew from her mouth.
In the past months, she had done what she could to avoid the recently returned Uchiha to little avail. When she had taken to driving herself to exhaustion, Sasuke had begun a routine of checking in on her. Subtly, of course. Rather than waking up chilled after passing out atop the covers, she would be tucked securely beneath the coverlet. Or prepared, nutrient rich meals would make their way into the fridge, all of them ideal for reversing chakra depletion.
More recently, however, he had taken it upon himself to follow her home after late shifts. And to add additional traps to her apartment's several large windows which had been previously unguarded. Most galling, though, was his new liberty with preparing her unconscious form for bed. Rather than simply depositing her in whatever state of dress he had discovered her in as he had initially, Sakura had begun to awake in her shirt and shorts only. Her medical supplies, shoes, belt and other accessories would be arranged nearby. Maddeningly neatly.
She resented the gesture beyond words.
His pity, charity and concern were unwarranted and unwelcome so far as Sakura was concerned. She was a self-sufficient adult. If she wanted to be doted on and patronized, she would move back in with her parents. Sasuke's sudden worry for her wellbeing was abrasive and ill timed.
She was pulled from her thoughts when one of her flailing, thinly charged fists skimmed Sasuke's cheekbone. A dark curse spilled from the tall shinobi as he inadvertently loosened his grip on Sakura, reeling from the blow.
Dropping away from the height at which she'd been suspended, Sakura squealed as her numb leg gave way under her weight. She quickly righted her posture, shifting her bearing onto the unaffected leg and vigorously rubbing the hip joint Sasuke had disrupted to speed the bloodflow and return of feeling.
Sasuke worked his jaw experimentally to test the newly forming bruise on his cheek. Grimacing, he refocused on Sakura, noting her lopsided stance with some amusement. But before he could comment, she was in motion.
When she saw the pained scowl warp into a shallow smirk, Sakura felt her temper boil. Her weight tipped back as she twisted herself into a punishing reverse body kick.
A silent sigh escaped Sasuke as he elected to absorb the weaker-than-usual blow with one forearm. Sakura's still formidable strength resulted in what was sure to develop into a bone-deep bruise as her shin met his block with brutal efficiency. Before she could dance back from the failed strike, Sasuke snapped his arm down and clasped onto her overextended ankle. A quick tug and Sakura's sluggish reflexes were sending her to the floor. With another quicksilver motion, Sasuke had gathered a fistful of her shirt's material between her tensed shoulders.
So when Sakura opened her dread squinted eyes at last, she was hovering. Her nose was inches from the polished floorboards. Growling in mixed embarrassment and disbelief, the pinkette dropped her hands flat and wrenched herself away from Sasuke. She ignored the instant nausea her wearied body summoned with her abrupt handstand and flowed out of the awkward position with a tumbler's grace.
She agilely rose from the crouch she'd landed in and felt her hands fist at her sides as red hot frustration began to swell in her chest. Her voice was raw with the emotions as she bit out, "Leave, Sasuke. Now."
In a gesture more bravado than wise, the pinkette attempted to brush rudely past the looming shinobi.
Sasuke's eyes followed her angry stride with the avid eyes of a predator anticipating a chase. Allowing her to shoulder past his position in the hall he fell into step, shadowing her as she retreated into the bedroom. Once he had crossed the threshold, Sasuke shut the door firmly and awaited her response.
Whirling at the unexpected sound, Sakura felt her bottom jaw drop. "What do you think you're doing?"
"You are avoiding me." Sasuke tilted his head mockingly as he moved to stand toe-to-toe with the shorter kunoichi. "I dislike it."
A black mood fell over Sakura's previously thunderstruck expression. Her pearly teeth flashed as she prepared to tell him how little she cared for what he liked. Or for his opinion on her actions.
Before her diatribe could begin Sasuke added, "Your choices are your own." Ignoring her venomous 'damn right' and dipping into her personal space, he abruptly changed tact. "But risking your health is another matter entirely." His dark eyes traced over her heightening color as it bloomed across her cheeks with her temper. Yet he was undaunted as he pronounced, "You will cease your childish actions. Immediately."
A boiling hiss was Sakura's answer as a ripple of pure tension and ire washed over her. Beyond verbal response, the pinkette swung out a basic series of blows. A quick internal evaluation told the kunoichi that the rest she'd acquired had replenished her chakra minimally. More than enough to sustain life and interaction, but nothing near her normal levels as a highly trained kunoichi.
She was capable of waterwalking, if she was lucky. All of her higher prowess techniques were strictly off limits. Sakura felt her face scrunch in irritation an instant before her brain screeched to a complete halt.
Sasuke had batted aside her watery resistance and pressed his front against hers, sealing them together hip to chest and pinning her effectively against her nightstand. She could, of course, pulverize the thing without any chakra assistance with the temper that was raging in her head at present-but she had always coveted the little bit of furniture and refused to give Sasuke the satisfaction of rankling her that far.
She took a deep breath that quivered with the fluttering of the pure pique that superheated her lungs. But before her lips could form the caustic sentiments that were pooling on her tongue, a very unexpected advance arrested her plans entirely.
Sasuke's cool, firm mouth had descended onto her own.
The kiss was a personification of the Uchiha who held her, Sakura thought foggily. Calm, collected and subtly dominant. One long-fingered hand anchored itself in her hair just behind her ear to hold her just so.
She knew she was responding sluggishly, lips moving in a lazy mirror of his. Naturally. And did it ever feel right. It was so, so much easier than fighting the roiling attraction that had been building between them for weeks. A hot, tight welling of emotion swelled behind her ribs and she wove her fingers into the nape of his neck in response.
Sakura knew that she was at once euphoric and furious with Sasuke's actions. Since his return, since their never-should-have-been kiss he had pursued her with patient confidence. She had eluded him for some time, but she could feel his smug contentment as he zeroed his attentions onto her lower lip.
His kiss was steady. What it lacked in honed skill it made up for in fervor and persistence. Even when the overriding need to breathe broke them apart, Sasuke continued to trace her small face with short, suctioned presses. From her jaw to the corner of her gasping lips and up to the thin, sensitive skin beneath her glazed eyes. The feathering of his labored breath across her nose as he at last calmed, mouth pressed to her brow made the pinkette screw her eyes shut tight against the rush of warmth that it inspired.
The sincere affection that roared into her heart with the gesture startled Sakura from her stupor.
She could not do this. Not with Sasuke. Not after how she had behaved only a few short months ago. Once she would have done anything, been anyone to be the recipient of his attentions. Not any longer, she had promised herself. She was supposed to be stronger! But in an instant he had stripped away the hard work until only bumbling, desperate, pathetic Sakura remained.
Sakura slotted her hand against the firm muscle that blanketed his chest to create the illusion of distance between them. To attempt to press him back. She felt his body begin to go rigid as he realized what she was doing. Clenching her free hand tightly as soon as she freed it from his dark hair, she avoided his burning gaze.
"Leave, Sasuke." Her voice was hoarse and her lips sensitive to the cool night air as she broke eye contact to mutter, "Please."
A low thrum sounded from his chest before he snarled, "No."
His warm, rough palms burned into her bare hips as he slipped beneath the hem of her shirt to grip her. The rasp of his thumb against her blush-warm cheek made her start as he moved to growl in her ear. "Stop fighting. Just—"
The thought was left unfinished as Sakura twisted away from his dark, kiss-roughened voice.
She had been battling the emotions their impromptu kiss had dredged up within her for months. Still she was determined, if bone-weary.
Green eyes, passion-darkened to nearly match his own met Sasuke as she whispered, "I—" Her delicately boned jaw hardened with the strength that few accredited to her as she said fiercely, "What happened was a misunderstanding. I did not intend to be so forward. Not with you."
His stunned exhale shook with his instant ire. Aristocratic features, once stained with color, drained bone white. The hooded, sooty eyes that had been smoldering an instant ago were frosty.
He remembered her sweet features peering up at him from years ago. Her tearful confession and the separation that followed rose in his mind. His promise to himself, that when he returned that it would also be to her, coalesced on the tip of his tongue. She did not know, he tried to reason with himself. She could not. He had never shown her—but something primal was beating at his temples, tightening his muscles.
Sakura, little Sakura with all her smiles and insurmountable persistence and patience, who had once loved him so completely…didn't want him any longer. Something shattered into a million sharp edges in his chest. A red fury filled his head as the single absolute thing he had held onto disappeared with her words.
"Not with me?" His laugh was a graveled sound.
Pressure at her hip told Sakura that his hold on her was beginning to border painful as he bowed his head until he was speaking against her lips. "You love me."
It was still true. Sasuke knew it was. His eyes flickered shut as he tried to reign in whatever was overcoming him. He could still sense the intangible something that emanated from her. The peace that he felt in her presence remained, despite the physical frustration that had bloomed. He had been too hasty, he realized belatedly.
He had only just returned to the newly rebuilt Konoha when he sought Sakura out. A week, he thought it had been. One filled with the whirl of hearings, sentencing and near-contentment. His clan was avenged and he was truly free for the first time since he was a child.
Something like eagerness had hounded him until he saw her coral hair shimmering in the last rays of daylight. Sasuke couldn't remember exactly what had been said. But he could remember in detail the way she froze, a disbelieving gasp escaping her.
He thought he might have been smiling when she turned. Her face had been a mask of awe and disbelief. It had occurred to him then that she had not known of his return. The entire process of exposing the Elders and reinstating him as a Konoha nin had been a strictly need-to-know affair.
She had approached him as if in a trance. Her still-so-soft hands had found his face as she breathed his name, almost fearfully. There had been a swirl of sensation and then her hitching voice as she pulled away. Tears he had at first dismissed would come to haunt him as she fled, her parting words lost to him.
In hindsight, she might have thought he was a trick of her mind. But he had prevailed. He watched over her during practices, escorted her home from her rounds at the hospital. Tolerated her alienation…but her stubbornness was beginning to become dangerous. He recalled seeing her crumpled on the floor when he arrived with dread.
Whatever had been growing between them since his return was volatile. They were passionate; rather it was in affection or defiance. It was beginning to spin out of control—to Sakura's detriment.
Temper and frustration boiled in Sasuke as he opened his eyes once more.
Sakura caught a glimpse of his onyx gaze a millisecond before his second barrage of kisses began. This time he poured every bit of longing and tension and want into his actions. She could only gasp as his unsmiling mouth buried itself at the base of her throat.
What began as a laving of the small hollow became a nip. Sakura felt her head fall back helplessly in response, her every nerve alight. Her fingers strained then clenched onto the corded muscle at his shoulders as legs wrapped themselves instinctively at his waist.
He had begun to move up the column of her throat when her heels settled at the small of his back. Sakura more felt than heard the pleased sound that she earned with the motion.
Sasuke kneaded the underside of one thigh as he lifted Sakura away from the nightstand she had been perched upon. Backing blindly toward the bed, he had at last made his way to her mouth when he settled them onto the pillowy softness of the mattress.
Sakura found herself pinned beneath Sasuke's surprising weight almost instantly. She felt herself buck under the sweet pressure he was applying. It was an escape attempt, she told herself, but knew it was nothing of the sort.
Weak. I am still so weak. But she could not banish his smile from her mind's eye. She could remember so clearly the way the sun was falling in the sky behind him as he looked at her. He was home. He was home and he was safe and he was happy. Everything she had ached for, for so long was coming true.
They had both been overcome by the situation, she rationalized. The kiss had been young, weak-minded Sakura's grand reappearance. She had taken advantage of Sasuke's uncharacteristic levity. She had projected her feelings onto him in that instant and made a complete fool of herself.
But now? Sakura could not logically explain what Sasuke meant by his actions now. A small ball of tearful hope began to form in her throat.
She had explained away his previous actions. Peace offerings, condolences or something like them—to ease the embarrassment she had felt after their kiss. He was a new, lighter Sasuke after all. Now that the burden had been shed, Sakura could convince herself that he was simply attempting to be a good teammate. In his own presumptuous, overbearing way.
But this—this physicality and affection that he had adopted was undeniable.
"Sakura." Her name was a groan against her skin as he tugged at her fuller, lower lip. His eyes were smudged with shadows as he repeated it again, dragging out the syllables between lingering kisses.
Burrowing her fingers into his hair, Sakura felt the last vestiges of her bruised pride fall away. At last she parted her lips and met him with equal, eager passion. She allowed him to slip into her mouth, relishing the smooth roll of his hips that the concession earned her.
Sakura felt a smile form as they broke apart to breathe. Dragging blunt fingernails across the base of his neck, she grinned as he shifted in pleasure. She shivered in return when one of his hands lazily trailed the curve of her side. As he dipped to shower more attention to her neck, Sakura propped herself onto her elbows.
Carefully raking a nail over the opposite ear and delighting in his hitched breath, Sakura pressed a chaste kiss to his lobe and reaffirmed, "I still love you, Sasuke-kun."
A drabble to get me back into the writing groove. I'm not dead, real life and computer woes have kept me away. For the record, none of my stories are discontinued.
As to this piece, consider it 'canon' minus the manga's attempted murder…I didn't feel like dealing with that angst atm.
Basically written as a horrendously over-wordy, never-ending make out scene. Try not to search for too much plot…or logic. Oh, it was inspired when someone mentioned to me that a couple "fought sexily." Yeah. So I developed persistent!Sasuke and embarrassed!Sakura and pitted their egos against one and other. Hope you enjoyed.
Reviews are golden, thanks for reading.