disclaimer: nope.
dedication: to mr. brightside. sorry. you're kind of stuck with me. lessthanthree?
notes: i need to stop watching trashy reality TV. and. idek what the hell this is. srsly.

title: the youth electric
summary: Growing up is hard to do. "He makes me messy, Karin." — Sasuke/Sakura; 26/5o.

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Down on hands and knees, a girl pressed her ear against the ground. She held her breath, and listened.

It was a miscalculation.

Silence reigned, and she spat, disgusted.

—

Smoke snaked through the air, wisps drifting like flotsam. The sun, hidden behind a filmy curtain, was blotted from the sky. The taste of wood-smoke was acrid in her throat, choke-hold, nauseating, angry, dirty.

Sakura raised her head, and wiped strands of sweat-dark pink hair out of her eyes. She took a breath of smoky air into her lungs, and wrinkled her nose.

"The air tastes like shit," Sakura grumbled, slammed the door of someone else's apartment—bang—dropped her pack on the floor—thud—and went to find something to eat.

The room was cold, and Sakura shivered.

The calendar hung on the wall, glaringly obvious.

Sakura breaths came out in puffs. It was impossible to ignore, and it drove her crazy. Another day, crossed off with red ink. The empty squares taunted, blank with their blankness, white with their whiteness, empty with their emptiness.

It was just that many days until she got back into classes. It was just that many days before everyone came back. It was just that many days.

Sakura grabbed the red marker sitting beside the phone, and struck out another day—

(and today was a day just like any other)

—because it was just that many more days.

—

Sakura really didn't like doing laundry.

It wasn't that she had a real issue with the laundry part itself; it was more that it was just such a waste of time, and Sakura hated wasting her time.

Her new roommate would be showing up, soon.

And, while Sakura hated wasting her time, she hated dirty laundry more.

So she sat in the basement of her dorm, and flicked through a magazine—flick flick flick—a little bit bored and a lot bit tired. She wasn't supposed to care about things like this. Too superficial, too far out of reach, too fake for brainy Haruno Sakura.

And she was so not in the mood.

—flick flick flick— went the pages, and Sakura waited quietly like a good girl for the laundry machines to finish humming.

It was going to be a long night.

—

"You? You are my roommate?" and the shriek echoed through the still mostly empty campus.

"Who were you expecting, Sakura?"

"Not you!" she hissed at him, teeth bared. If she were an animal, she'd have been frothing at the mouth.

Sakura really didn't like the thought of that.

"Hn."

"God, you tick me off!"

They didn't speak for a week.

—

Sakura smelled like pomegranate conditioner and sex, and looked like shit, when she stepped into the campus coffee shop. Eyes black (from too many nights where she didn't sleep, he guessed), hair all over (had she slept on it?), and the faint green tinge of a hangover—that was Sakura at her best and worst.

She smiled wryly at him.

"I don't need to hear it—I know I look like hell."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Where were you?"

"Drinking. With Ino and Karin."

He said nothing, because that was nothing new. He waited for her next words, because she was Sakura and Sakura not talking was like the world not spinning, was like tomorrow not coming, was like—was like the sun not rising.

It just didn't happen.

"I at least woke up in my own room, this time?"

"You are going to kill yourself," he grumbled, and shakes dark hair out of his eyes.

Sakura laughed, harsh and sharp like jagged shards of broken glass. "Nah—you're going to make sure I don't."

"Just like always, Sakura."

"Just like always, Sasuke."

—

This is how she remembers the end of (her) world:

There was a boy dressed in black, not too far off, and a jay bird, sing-screeching in the distance. There was blue sky, and endless tasselled hats raining down in warm June air.

That was graduation.

It was a long time ago.

But then, a lot of things were a long time ago, and Sakura just didn't have the patience to deal with them, anymore.

—

"You two have the most fucked up relationship ever."

"What do you want me to say?" Sakura hissed through her teeth. "At least he's not my step-brother, or something! And there is no way it's as fucked up as yours and Suigetsu's."

Karin snickered. "Honey, you may be fucked up, but you're not that fucked up. Or, actually, you might be—you just don't have someone to test that theory out on. And Suigetsu's a douche, anyway."

The cup of tea in her hands was cold, and Sakura stared at her reflection in the saccharine liquid. Chamomile, it was chamomile, and so sweet, so sweet, because Karin loved sweet tea. But Sakura was starting to think she hated it, if only to be contrary.

"He makes me messy, Karin."

The two girls looked down at their cups.

No one said anything, and Sakura didn't know what to do.

But that was nothing new, was it?

—

The atmosphere was thick with tension and the crackle of raw power that the air seemed to hold right before a thunderstorm.

Sakura's bones felt too big for her body, so she just stood outside on the balcony, wrapped up in a (stolen) housecoat (of Sasuke's). Chilly air nipped at her cheeks. When Sakura looked down, down, down to the pavement, the colours of autumn flared to life around her, although they were dampened by the dark husk of the clouds overhead.

Sakura shivered, and drew the housecoat tighter around her frame.

She was a Summer Child, made for late spring and long days and short nights and heat.

Sakura did not do well in the cold, and—

—eyes on the back of her neck had always made her shudder. Sakura turned around, and glanced at her roommate-person-boyfriend-thing.

He didn't even say anything. He just raised an eyebrow at the housecoat, and stared at her like she'd gone mad.

Sakura huffed. "It's cold out here."

"Hn."

And his arms snaked around her waist from behind; solid, warm, strangely impersonal—it was so Sasuke.

"I have class in half an hour," she said.

"Sakura. You're being annoying."

But she made no move to leave, and the day wore on.

"It's going to snow," Sakura said softly.

The sky was dark grey, right then, and Sasuke's head dropped down onto her shoulder, fingers twining like weeds. "I know."

So they stood, and stared at the sky, and waited.

—

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fin.

notes2: hrm. idk what this is. that seems to be happening a lot, lately. i'm feeling a bit too big for my skin, too. i'm coming to terms with a lot of things, i guess - so feedback would be muchly appreciated! :)