title: breathe slow
pairing: eventual SasuSaku.
dedication: To chocolate cake, soda and the feeling you get when you buy new books.
notes: Here's to getting hit on by bisexual MILFs, flailing over your older siblings' friends, checking out your coworker's ass and boys with pretty eyes. Tis be my life in a nutshell.
x
breatheslow
The fire crackled, in the center of the little camp they'd made.
Sasuke crouched in front of it, poking and prodding at it with a thick twig, to get the fire to expand and rise. On one of the thick, fallen branches they'd dragged to surround the fire, Sai sat and scribbled onto his sketchbook. Idly and somewhat subconsciously, Sasuke wondered how that thing was still intact.
Ino was nearby; they'd stopped only when they'd heard the noise of water. A river, they'd found out; Ino'd been adamant to leave the place because she wished to shower. So the boys had set camp little ways from the river, close enough to hear if Ino was attacked, but far enough to not see anything.
It'd been quiet and awkward between the two boys, the entire time.
It still was.
Sasuke wondered if it was tension. But, regardless of his instant distaste of his replacement for Team Seven, Sasuke didn't know him enough to feed any tension between them.
Maybe it had to do with that fact; the fact that Sai took over Sasuke's place in his old team. Maybe it had to do with the fact that Sai was friends with Naruto and Sakura. Maybe it had to do with the fact that it was Sai, now, that trained with them, went on missions with them, hung out with them, waited for Kakashi with them, and ate at Ichiraku's with them.
He wondered, again, completely subconsciously, if he sat on the same stool Sasuke did years ago.
Abruptly, yet slowly, Sai looked up from his sketching, dark eyes blank and that blank, placid smile on his face. "May I ask a question?"
Sasuke itched to say no. But, regardless, gave a noncommittal, cryptic grunt.
"Is it common for Uchihas to betray?"
Sasuke stared at him, incredulous, his blood boiling and his skin prickling.
"You betrayed Naruto and Sakura," Sai went on, completely clueless, "as well as Orochimaru, your teacher. And then you betrayed your other team... Are you going to betray Ino and I, as well?"
Sasuke'd never been a man of words; but he'd never been left speechless before. He stared at Sai with unreadable eyes, lips barely parted, mid-sneer, and stiff. How did he answer that? Should he answer that? Why would he answer that?
(Coz they're your teammates, now.
You, Ino and Sai.
You're a team now.
And, face it, Sasuke, your track record of working in a team is horrible. Leaving one teammate crying and passed out on a bench, almost killing the other; abandoning two and then sacrificing another. Yeah. You got some work to do, kid.
Here's your next chance to fix things. Go at it.)
"I've never been betrayed, before," Sai said, tone neutral, as if he were talking about anything else. "But by the way Naruto and Sakura go by, it must really hurt. I haven't really gotten that far in my books..."
Ino appeared, then, clean and looking happy. Sai trailed off and turned to look at her with one of his smiles before returning to stare at Sasuke, imploringly.
Sasuke swallowed, thickly, and grunted, shaking his head and paying only half attention to anything else, said that night.
