"You are quiet," said Kimimaro as he and Sakura made their way back to her office some time later.
Sakura lifted a shoulder into a shrug. "Just thinking."
"How is he?"
"He's…not quite here yet," said Sakura. "In the real world, I mean."
"Oh."
She gave Kimimaro a questioning look. "Nice of you to ask about him… I thought you hated him."
"I do not like him," said Kimimaro. "However…"
"However…?"
"I understand him. More now than before. How much Orochimaru's will had taken over. How there were things beyond his control."
His fingers drifted towards his collarbone, but he caught himself in the middle of the unconscious gesture and let his hand fall to his side. "He will feel the loss of the seal. These will not be good days for the Uchiha."
Sakura regarded Kimimaro with curiosity. He rarely spoke of the seals, nor of his experience with them, but something about seeing Sasuke suffer through the removal and its aftermath seemed to have affected him.
Kimimaro stopped to look behind them at Sasuke's door and its four bored Jounin guards. "It will be difficult. It leaves a void behind. It will take him time to find his own direction again."
"I take it you're speaking from experience."
"Yes," said Kimimaro, falling back into step beside her. "But. For him, it will be worse."
"Because he let the seal get to him so much more?"
"In a way," said Kimimaro. His eyebrows were drawn together in the slightest frown. "But. More than that. The Uchiha… he was driven by two things. The first, revenge upon his brother. The second, Orochimaru's will through the seal."
"And now…"
"Both are gone. He has learned that his brother was protecting him. So. Where is his revenge? Orochimaru no longer controls him. So. What drives him now?"
"Oh…"
"It will be heavy to endure," said Kimimaro. Again his fingers drifted to his collarbone. "One or the other would have been enough. But both…"
Sakura was surprised to find something like pity in Kimimaro's eyes. He shook his head. "What purpose will he have left?"
These observations were as perceptive as they were sombre. Kimimaro and Sakura walked on in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. When they reached Sakura's office, she was surprised to find that it was past six.
"Let's get out of here," she said, packing her things. "I didn't realize it was so late. Let's grab something to eat and go home…"
Kimimaro nodded, brightening up at the prospect of not spending another slow hour or two in Sakura's office.
As they left the hospital grounds, the sound of running footsteps behind them made both ninja pivot: Lee was coming up fast.
"Hello! Pardon me! Coming through!"
"Lee, hi," said Sakura.
"Can't talk, training!" said Lee, waving at them as he passed and speeding up further. "It is going to rain tonight! No time to lose!"
"Lee – wait!"
"Perhaps next time. Goodbye!"
"Lee!" said Sakura with enough exasperation to threaten a temperamental explosion if he didn't stop.
Lee wisely decided to halt his progress at that point, though he jogged on the spot while eyeing possible escape routes.
"Yes?" he said, looking sheepishly at Sakura and bashfully towards Kimimaro.
"We keep seeing you around, but you're always too busy to talk," said Sakura. "What's going on?"
"Training," said Lee. "It is so important. I should continue!"
He looked like he was thinking of making a break for it. Sakura put a friendly hand on his arm so that she could snatch him up by his jumpsuit if required. "Kimimaro was just talking to me about you the other day. He was saying how he remembered you, and—"
"He remembers me…?" said Lee, and the honour of it filled his eyes with quivery tears as he turned to Kimimaro.
"Yes – of course he does, and – what else was it you were saying, Kimimaro?"
Kimimaro, who had been pinning Lee with his usual expressionless stare, was elbowed sharply in the ribs.
He blinked and said, dutifully, "It was a good fight. I remember it well."
Lee's face glowed a radiant shade of red and he stepped forward to shake Kimimaro's hand. "I am honored. Do you really think so? Wow! No hard feelings? Friends?"
Again Sakura's elbow found Kimimaro's side, and he looked askance at her, but nevertheless nodded.
"Yes!" said Lee, pumping Kimimaro's hand up and down. "I thought you might not like me because we were not on the same side before. But! Now we are! I also remember our fight well! I also think that it was an outstanding fight!"
Lee's bashfulness disappeared completely as he began to relive some apparently glorious memories. He darted towards Kimimaro, his bandaged fists a blur as he weaved and shadowboxed around him. "I remember when you did that thing, like this, and this one, and then I did this, and you did that, and I got you, and you got me, smack, and I had sake (terrible), and I got you, pow, like that, do you remember? What a match! Such taijutsu I haven't seen since!"
"Yes," said Kimimaro, his hair blowing slightly in the breeze created by Lee's quick fists.
He caught one that came too close to his face for his liking, a crisp block right at the wrist. And Lee, bent at an awkward angle, flew into ecstasies of the precision of it, and what a glorious block it was.
"I have a Question for you, Kimimaro," said Lee when Kimimaro let go and permitted him to disentangle himself. "I have wanted to ask it since you came back, but I have been too shy…"
Two pink spots blossomed on Lee's cheeks and he took a deep breath. "I would like to know if you would be interested in joining Gai-sensei and me for training. I think that it could be a mutually beneficial endeavor. I would be honored to have a chance to train with someone of your calibre! I will not be offended if you say no; however, it would make me sad. I pledge to work hard always and be the best training partner for you! What do you think? Please say yes!"
Kimimaro studied the odd, overeager shinobi before him with his odd, equally overeager sensei waiting in the wings. Sakura watched Kimimaro, wondering how the prospect of Lee and Gai and their loud eccentricities would fare against the lethal monotony of her office…
After a moment, Kimimaro came to a decision.
"Yes," he said, "I would like that."
"Yes? Yes!" said Lee, with many victorious fist-pumps. "I will go and tell Gai-sensei immediately! He will also be thrilled! He has only the best things to say about you, Kimimaro!"
With that, Lee gave Kimimaro another handshake and Sakura a brisk salute, and disappeared at top speed with farewell cries about renewed vigour.
Sakura grinned at the adorableness of it all.
"I am not sure what I just agreed to," said Kimimaro, blinking at the retreating figure.
"A lot of hard work," said Sakura. "You're braver than I am. Gai does not go easy on his crew… but this might just work out really well for all of us. We can have Gai set up as a secondary custodian. I'll do the paperwork… then you'll be able to train, rather than die of boredom in my office."
Kimimaro still looked slightly bemused but nevertheless pleased with this development.
They wandered into the twilit village to get something to eat, chitchatting about the piece of extraordinariness that was Rock Lee.
It was a gorgeous evening, one of those soft, green-smelling evenings that portend the shift from late spring to early summer. Clouds were piling up in soft heaps to the east, tinged by the sunset's glow to peaches and pinks and creamy oranges. With those clouds came a breeze and the scent of ozone, faint and low – a sweet sharpness that promised the coming of rain.
The lampposts around them lit up with the fall of dusk, charting a romantic path for Kimimaro and Sakura through Konoha's quaint streets. As they made their slow way to Tabemono Avenue with its food stalls and little restaurants, Sakura began to notice that other people were walking in the same direction – couples, mostly, hand in hand or with their arms wrapped around each other's waists.
Of course, it was Friday night – a night when normal people go out on dates and maybe fall a little bit in love with each other and don't panic at the very thought. It elicited a surge of envy in Sakura to see these people around her enjoying these nascent relationships, so innocent and carefree, while she struggled with fear and indecision and confusion.
As the couples giggled and tripped their way by them, Sakura also envied them their anonymity: they didn't care who saw them together because they were random village boys out with village girls and no one gave a damn. That was something that she'd never have because she wasn't a nameless village girl, she was Sakura Haruno, and with her wasn't a random village boy, it was Kimimaro Kaguya. And together they would cause a little more reaction than a passing glance and a benign smile. Hell, when that stupid engagement misunderstanding had happened, it had made the front page of the newspapers…
Still. Watching the twitterpated couples meander by was enough to make Sakura want to take Kimimaro's hand and hold it in hers as they walked to see what it would be like, to do this innocent dating thing with someone she actually cared about, and all those sweet things that came with it…
But, on glancing up at him, she found that Kimimaro was steadfastly keeping an arm's length away from her (because she had asked him to, because she was stupid). In any case, he seemed lost in thought; his unfocused gaze drifted from the golden-pink sky to the street ahead without taking any of it in. So Sakura wrapped her fingers around the strap of her purse instead of his hand and kept walking, and she ignored all the lovey-dovey people around them and wished they'd get a room already.
They made it to Tabemono, where the vendors and restaurants had lit their lanterns-of-many-colours and their fairy lights, and so made the place look utterly magical. Sakura saw Kimimaro watch the goings-on at a yakiniku BBQ place with curiosity and got them an outside table there.
She showed him how to work the little coal grill that squatted in the centre of their table, and soon the air sizzled with the sound and fragrance of beef and pork and peppers cooking. Then she introduced him to the dipping sauces and their worlds of flavours – garlic and sesame and shallot and miso, so far from the Sound's bland fare – and even dared to feed him a piece from her own chopsticks, and hoped no one had seen that. Then he fed her a piece from his chopsticks (which tasted the better for it), and she really hoped no one had seen that.
All around them were other couples, talking or holding hands or playing footsie or other more risqué touching games. And she and Kimimaro were a part of it, except they weren't. It filled Sakura with a longing to be that comfortable, that familiar, that content.
It surprised her, how hard the longing hit her – how much she wanted it, too. And it was close to her – literally within reach, Kimimaro's hand was right there, an inch from hers, but she didn't dare, someone might recognize them, someone might see…
Sometime later, their cheerful waiter noticed that they were slowing down and bobbed over, asked if they were enjoying their date night (response: stuttered non-answer from Sakura and blank look from Kimimaro) and whether they'd like any dessert, they had homemade amanatto tonight?
"Oh," said Sakura, instantaneously flustered, "this isn't a – we aren't – um, yes, dessert sounds good, thank you…"
This spectacular display of articulateness complete, Sakura stared at the table. For his part, Kimimaro was polishing off the last of the chicken and appeared unperturbed by the exchange.
The waiter came back a moment later, and, since Sakura was still staring at the table, he adroitly slid a plate of peanut amanatto under her nose.
"For the lovely couple," he said. "On the house."
Kimimaro nodded his thanks; Sakura choked on her saliva (lovely couple?!) and muttered some inarticulate words of appreciation.
It occurred to her that she ought to run away from this complicated life and begin a new, less complicated one as a vagrant.
The waiter cleared the table and replaced their grill with a single candle, and Kimimaro and Sakura ate their desserts by the light of its glow – a glow that was, in Sakura's opinion, being extra romantic on purpose.
"You are quiet again," said Kimimaro after studying her for a while.
Sakura toyed with a piece of amanatto. "Yeah. Sorry."
"The Uchiha?"
"No, actually. If you must know… I'm thinking about ditching everything and becoming a vagabond."
A quiet huff of amusement greeted this declaration. "Why?"
"Because. My life is too complicated."
"Oh," said Kimimaro. There was a pause. Then: "Can I come with you?"
Sakura looked up at him and a smile made its way unbidden across her face. "Of course."
He was very pretty, Kimimaro, by candlelight. It flickered in warm touches along his jawline, his cheekbones, across his pale lips – all places that Sakura would like to be touching, too, which was unfair. It gave his eyes a new and enthralling green-gold richness.
Of course, the candlelight also gave her eyes a new richness – and made the hair that fell over her shoulder glow an opulent rose-gold, and her lips glossy and kissable. These things she knew from the way he was looking at her, this soft fascination verging on enchantment.
The waiter was right: they did make a lovely couple.
"Where will we go?" asked Kimimaro.
"I don't know," said Sakura. "Far away. Where no one knows us."
"What will we do?"
"Whatever we want. Anything we want."
Their eyes met and there was warmth in his and she knew that they shared an understanding of the various wants that she'd thrown into that general category. (And she wished, and she wished, that they could be like the couples around them finishing up their dinners, who would in a while be off to share goodnight kisses in doorways and other things in beds…)
"I like this idea," said Kimimaro.
"If only I'd have the guts to do it," said Sakura.
Kimimaro studied her hand on the table next to his and looked like he was going to take it, and she hoped he would. But he didn't – he just put his next to it, close enough that she thought she could feel its warmth. "It would not be a life for you."
"Wouldn't it?"
"No. You are needed here."
"No one's irreplaceable," said Sakura.
"Some people are," said Kimimaro with a very pointed look.
"No," said Sakura, though the pointed look made her happy.
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
Sakura regarded him with mingled playfulness and warning. "I don't take kindly to being disagreed with, Kaguya."
And he looked at her and blinked and understood her dumb flirting. The slightest hint of a smile ghosted across his lips. "So what will you do about it?"
What would she do about it? She didn't know; she hadn't quite planned out her next steps here. But, when in doubt, she did have an old standby…
"Arm-wrestle you into the ground," said Sakura. "The winner is right. And – just so we're clear – it'll be me."
Fine white eyebrows rose; whatever he'd expected, it hadn't been this.
"…Arm-wrestle?" repeated Kimimaro. He looked at her, then at her small hand beside his (deceptively small, of course, he'd seen it bend steel and casually crack a wall).
"…I believe I may be making a mistake," said Kimimaro. He anchored his elbow into the table and raised his hand. "However."
Sakura pulled her chair up closer, held up her hand, and grinned a delighted grin. "Oh, yes. You are most definitely making a mistake."
Their palms met, and immediately Sakura was adrift on happy, stupid hormones and the rising beats of her pulse. And they didn't start to push hard right away, obviously – both of them knew that that wasn't the point of this exercise. They slid their hands against each other's under the pretext of getting a good grip or whatever, and they interlocked their fingers to see if that was better, and then Sakura thought it was actually her left arm that was stronger for this so they switched, and then she said no that didn't feel right, so they switched back again, both of them biting back idiot smiles.
Then they ran out of excuses to just touch each other, so they set their shoulders and Kimimaro nudged at her palm with his, and Sakura nudged back, and then she pressed a bit harder, and he pressed back as well, and she put more shoulder into it, and he resisted easily. Then, out of scientific curiosity, Sakura put in all her strength, her human strength, without the push of her chakra, to see how she'd measure up to him without it, and his grip tightened and he pushed back and she found that the back of her hand hovered an inch above the table. (He didn't make her lose yet, that would've defeated the purpose of the game.)
Then Sakura's eyes flashed and she decided to show Kimimaro who was actually the boss around here, and she surged her chakra to her arm, and his eyes widened as he found the back of his hand hovering an inch above the table.
Sakura looked up at Kimimaro in satisfaction because she had just totally proven her point – except that now, impossibly, he was pushing back at her in spite of the brunt of her chakra-enhanced strength against him, and now their hands were back up where they'd started – how?
"You…!" gasped Sakura when she looked down and saw that he had his forearm braced against the table by two bones emerging from his wrist.
And now he was most definitely smirking. Which made him veer beyond handsome and into sexy territory, which was unjust because it was so distracting.
Sakura narrowed her eyes and put more power into her push and she was surprised, very surprised, at how strongly he resisted.
Then she remembered that those bones had survived the ten thousand tons of pressure of Gaara's Great Sand Burial back in the day, and they'd been the bones of a sick Kaguya back then, not one in his prime…
She wasn't the only one surprised, though – Kimimaro, too, was looking at her with a new kind of admiration because he knew the strength of his bones, and now they were being put to the test by this girl with eyes bright and defiant and a slender arm flexed stubbornly before him and a hand in his squeezing just hard enough to suggest that she could crush it if she wanted to…
Soft clicks, a shiver against her palm: he'd just put up his layer of armour. Sakura squeezed harder and Kimimaro's smirk widened.
There was an ominous squeak.
"We are going to break this table," said Kimimaro.
"Are you saying you're quitting?" said Sakura, finding herself feeling more competitive than she might've imagined.
"No," said Kimimaro.
"Are you sure?" said Sakura with another surge of force. She pushed his hand down an inch.
She saw his eyes flick to her forehead; the little rhombus that was her yin seal must've glowed with that push of chakra.
"Very sure," said Kimimaro, and the protruding bones were pushed out further, and now Sakura's hand was on the wrong side of things.
The table was a sturdy old thing, but this fresh pressure made it creak in a loud complaint about the injustice of it all.
"Okay, okay," said Sakura, relenting on the pushing and glancing around for their watchful waiter. "Let's not get kicked out."
"Are you saying you are quitting?"
"No," said Sakura emphatically.
"Then?"
"Let's call it a stalemate."
Kimimaro inclined his head. "Very well."
"You don't look satisfied."
"I will want a rematch."
"Brave. You should quit while you're ahead, though – I'll win, you know," said Sakura, because she knew that she was strong.
"I do not think so," said Kimimaro, because he also knew that he was strong. "However. You are very confident."
"I have reason to be," said Sakura with a little smirk of her own.
"I am curious now," said Kimimaro, studying her in a new way – a different way, not how a love-struck boy gazes at his girl, but the way a shinobi appraises a challenger.
"About?"
"I do not want to arm-wrestle you."
Sakura raised an eyebrow. "Then…?"
"I want to fight you."
…And Sakura found herself really liking this idea.
"Let's do it," she said with a grin. "We'll find some time at the training grounds. And I'll teach you a thing or two."
Again Kimimaro gave her that look of evaluation, so different from his usual dreamy stare. It made her blood rise in excitement and anticipation – it made her want to start something right now. She wouldn't, but – the desire was there.
"So are you letting go, or…?" said Sakura after a beat, because they were both still clasping hard at each other's hands.
"No," said Kimimaro. "You first."
"Um, no. You first."
"No."
"Well then, I guess we're here forever."
"That is fine."
"Great."
"Good."
A cough made them both look up: the waiter was dropping off the bill.
And then he caught sight of Kimimaro's arm with its bone protrusions and stared at it with wide, horrified eyes, and went quite white.
"Oh, the bill, thank you," said Sakura, disengaging her hand from Kimimaro's. "Sorry – we were just, um, settling an argument…"
Kimimaro, probably in what he hoped was an inconspicuous fashion, reabsorbed the bones. And at that sight, the waiter slumped into a faint so sudden and quiet that no one around them noticed. Kimimaro caught him and set him into a chair as Sakura pressed healing fingertips to his temples and said, "Oopsie."
They departed just as the waiter was coming to and left a large tip behind to make up for the trauma.
Sakura was able to hold in her laughter until they'd crossed the street. Then she held herself against a wall under multi-coloured lights and tried to breathe between giggles. "Did you see his face? I thought he was going to barf on your lap, oh my god, but really, though, I've never seen anyone pass out so gracefully before. Did anyone even realize…?"
Kimimaro looked back to the patio where the waiter was blinking and looking at the pile of cash in front of him in confusion, and all of the other patrons were carrying on as usual. "They have no idea…"
"Good," said Sakura. "Let's get out of here."
As they trotted along the darkening streets towards Sakura's apartment, thunder rumbled and the air grew heavy with the sharp scent of rain just before it hits.
And then it came, a heavy curtain sweeping in from the east. Sakura could hear it coming like a distant wave. She grabbed Kimimaro's hand and pulled him into a nearby pergola overgrown with camellias to wait out the worst of the downpour.
It was a beautiful pergola laden with lanterns glowing softly into the night and fragrant with hundreds of blossoms – but it was a bit leaky, as latticework tends to be. This gave Kimimaro and Sakura an excuse to move to a corner where the camellias grew thickest above and nestle together in the darkness there.
They watched the rain come down. The air grew rich with the smell of wet petals – and also Kimimaro because Sakura was so close to him. Or maybe he was close to her, had he gotten closer? He'd gotten closer, Sakura was sure of it because his shoulder was now right in front of her; she watched droplets fall onto it and leave little marks like kisses on his shirt.
Which she also wanted to do, only on his skin.
She looked up at him. The golden glow from the lanterns around them danced in the rain and caught in her wet lashes like tiny fairy lights.
And he was enchanted, enchanted…
She felt a raindrop hit her bottom lip. His eyes flicked down, then back up. Then he looked away from her, almost pained.
"What is it?"
"I cannot look at you," said Kimimaro. "It is – too much…"
They were still holding hands, which she remembered because his grip on hers tightened.
"No," said Sakura, "it's not enough."
He turned to her, brought her hand up to his face, and pressed his mouth to it, first the back, then the middle of her palm, then the thin skin of her inner wrist, which made her knees threaten to give; her knees were weak, and she was weak, and she wished that she could just close her eyes and hold this moment forever.
He held her hand against his cheek and closed his eyes, and perhaps he was making the same wish. She reached up with her other hand and pulled his face down to hers. It was dark, it was raining, no one was around – and as far as she was concerned, no one else existed right now other than this man whose hair she was now twining her fingers into, and whose hands were on her waist, and whose breaths she was breathing.
She pushed herself to her tiptoes and their mouths met – a lovely, contradictory combination of hesitant and eager because they oughtn't, but they wanted to, but they shouldn't, but they wanted to. So she kissed him, once, twice, and retreated, and he pulled her back in and caught her lips and whispered some words against them. And she wanted to fall right here in the petal-strewn puddles at their feet because there was no strength left in her, only a delicious euphoria of mouth against mouth and her hands in his hair and his grip pulling her against him so tightly…
She was dizzy; she needed air. She clutched at his shirt and breathed and felt his heartbeat flying under her fingertips.
"I need you to stop doing…whatever you are doing to me," said Kimimaro into her hair.
"What am I doing to you…?"
He was in a daze, unfocused, breathless. "This. Making me – like this…"
Again she reached for his face and brought it down to hers, close enough that their lips brushed when she spoke. "Serves you right, because – because it's what you do to me.
"And I won't stop," whispered Sakura, her mouth soft against his, "because I like it. I really, really like it."
She felt him smile into her kisses. "So do I."
The rain came in harder and dappled Kimimaro's shoulders further, leaving gleaming trails where drops dripped from his wet hair down to his neck. And Sakura looked up at him and said, it was so stupid, but she was jealous of raindrops. Which he didn't understand until she reached up and said against his neck: these raindrops, specifically. And she kissed them away, and his pulse beat under her lips, matching the beat of the rain, of droplets leaping from leaf to leaf.
Then his fingers were on her jaw and tilting her head up to him, and he was kissing her again. She leaned back against the living wall behind her, green tendrils and sodden flowers, and pulled him against her, one hand in the dripping white camellias and one hand in his dripping white hair.
And it was beautiful, this height of happiness, where the air was rarefied and made it hard to breathe.
VVV
To be continued…
