title: honesty
pairing: SasuSaku
summary: AU. "I know," he repeated, "I know that I don't want goodbye to be the last thing you say to me."
prompt: uptown girl
for: mint poppies
notes: continuation; last part of latest drabble series.
disclaimer: not not not not mine, not mine. Ahem, so not mine.
He found her a few days later in a coffeehouse on the other side of the city divide, sipping slowly from a chipped glass that had might have been cream once upon a time, but had darkened with the passage of time. She wore a thin white trench, with large black sunglasses, dark enough to shield her eyes from view, even as the rain continued to pitter patter its way down roof shingles and tree leaves outside. The blue cashmere scarf she had carelessly wrapped around the thin white column of her neck —a gift from a Christmas recently past —seemed somehow appropriate, even with their early spring. Predictably, she was reading. It was Dinesan this time, he noted, and wondered whether she'd bothered to keep his old texts—whether she'd exiled them, along with his memory.
She was out of place here, in this dingy café, like a hothouse flower in the middle of a drought.
As he approached, the walls seemed to close in around her, effectively barring his progress, and Sasuke found himself wondering whether she had somehow charmed them to keep him at bay. Sakura was like that, he thought to himself, so quick to slip into and under one's exterior, so quick to find the heart of things, and bend them to her will so gently that they could not resent her for it. Everything after seemed to come easier, after that. He was resigned in a complacent sort of way, as though he had finally come to terms with the way he reacted around her. He sidestepped a wayward wooden chair, and slid into the seat across from her with little more than a silent glance of acknowledgment. She glanced up once, twice, but did not speak, and only continued reading, twining winter tales around her fingertips, before finally turning the page.
A stranger would have thought them strangers.
Without preamble, he began.
"You surprised me, a few nights ago. I didn't think you would come." It was a humbling admission, but it was truth, and he hoped she understood.
She said nothing, but her fingers stilled where they were poised to turn the page. That was enough, for now. He resisted the sudden, uncharacteristic urge to fiddle with the napkin she'd left abandoned by the wayside, and when it did not look like she would reply, went on.
"I said I had nothing to say to you, and that night, I didn't. You surprised me, Sakura. I haven't seen you—we haven't seen each other in months. I had a right to be surprised."
"Yes," she said, her tone free from any inflection. "So you've said." Her glasses never left the book in front of her, and they prevented him from knowing whether she was looking at anything but words.
"I don't know what I'm doing here," he continued. "I don't know why I needed to find you. I stayed after you left."
"So, I imagined," she said, her voice soft, but detached. "But now, I know. Thank you for telling me."
He stood up, and walked the short distance around the small square table they shared, looked down at the crown of her bowed head, until the heat of his gaze forced her to turn her face up, to look at him. Without invitation, he grabbed the sunglasses off the bridge of her nose, and placed them on the table, beside her chipped cream-once-upon-a-time-white mug.
Her eyes were rimmed with red, and in them were the remnants of an old despair.
"I don't know why I called you then," he said again. "But I know that—" Here he broke off to swallow a portion of pride. Here, this—this was honesty.
"I know," he said now, as she looked up with her red-rimmed eyes, and her cashmere scarf, strung around her neck like the most tenuous of bonds, "I know," he repeated, "I know that I don't want goodbye to be the last thing you say to me."
Sasuke turned around at that, after saying his piece, content to walk away with the knowledge that at least, now she knew.
He was unprepared, for the sudden soft weight, pressed against his back—for the feel of her nose pressing into the curve between his neck and shoulder, and the thin arms that circled his waist with aching familiarity.
"And I," she said softly, her voice muffled by the scent of him, "I don't ever want to say it again, Sasuke. Not to you. So don't please don't make me. Just stay, this time."
"Stay," he said, echoing her words, even as his hands covered hers.
"Stay."
We know what happens after, yeah?
Last part of that series! I finaly finished one! :D
