title: vici
summary: They were lying in the aftermath of their shared destruction.
pairing: SasuSaku - I ought to branch out. Maybe SakuSasu?
for: My incorrigible little rugrat. This wasn't exactly what you were expecting I know, but I couldn't bear to make this unhappy.
notes: Implied smut. Also, I am starting on the requests I currently have on my LJ. Please remember that as of now, new ones are still not being accepted. My apologies, but I have quite a lot on my plate. :(
Second, this particular piece takes place, I hope, sometime after rebuilding. Sasuke has returned, and it was sort of peaceable. That is really all that is necessary to know.
Last, but certainly not least, thank you all for your continued support! I really appreciate the kind, and even the not-so-kind, words. :)
disclaimer: Naruto and all elements associated with that work of fiction do not belong to me.
They were lying in the aftermath of their shared destruction.
The room was a battlefield—clothes were strewn haphazardly over the back of one chair, on the shade of one lamp, on the planes of the floor. The bed sheets were rumpled, and half-unraveled, and the blood stain, centered on a field of white. Even the pillows hadn't been spared—there were two depressions, hollows carved in by hands and heads and aching sighs.
Sakura rather thought that her body was one in surrender—there were teeth marks across her shoulders, bruises around her thighs, her waist, her breasts. There were scratches on her back, and rug burns on her knees from when he'd taken her from behind. He'd soothed the marks with his tongue soon after, but the burn remained, pink and insistent, flush with indignation.
Sasuke, she thought, hadn't escaped unscathed either. He'd misjudged his initial angle of attack, and had a bruise on his forehead for the trouble, and the bags beneath his eyes spoke for a restlessness born of desperation. Her nails had left gouges in his shoulders, and red lines on his back, and her heels had, at one point, dug in so completely into the small of his back that it still throbbed. She'd marked her territory, had mapped out his body with nips that had long faded into what looked like battle scars.
Her taking, she thought, had not been an easy one.
It was, she thought as she watched him watch her, more violent than anything else, but that was what he knew. It would never be softness, and they would never be whole—which was fine.
Sakura had long ago lost the desire for assimilation.
She rolled over to face him, tracing the lines of his face with quiet admiration. His long sojourn had only left him more defined—his features were sharper and more aristocratic. For Sasuke, everything seemed to exist on a permanently positive slope, and Sakura had given up trying to hate him for it.
He hadn't said anything yet, and she hadn't offered any words. A part of her didn't want to know what this meant to him, and certainly not what it didn't. She knew she was the only one he'd ever touched this way—even if he hadn't said it in words, his hesitant touches, and initial awkward fumbling had made it clear enough. Along the way, she'd stopped wondering about the significance of him choosing her. The thought sounded strange in her head—hopelessly convoluted and backwards, despite. Hadn't it always been the other way around? Why was he suddenly reaching for her, and why was she avoiding his touch?
She couldn't ask him what this meant. What did it mean, to him, this war they'd enacted with lips and teeth and gasps and—
"Where are you going?"
His words sounded sharp in the darkness of the room, and Sakura started. She didn't remember getting up from her position next to him, but here she was, bent at the waist at the foot of his bed, and already half-dressed. It occurred to her then, that she was—
"I think I'm leaving, Sasuke-kun." His name was a habit she couldn't break, and she wondered, even as her shaking fingers slipped the last button into its hole, whether this would turn into one too.
A part of her hoped so, and did it without shame. The rest of her ached, even as the words left her mouth without hesitation.
"I'm lying next to you, and I just—I just wonder whether you'll be here, when I wake up tomorrow morning. I can't just—" Sakura felt fractured, as though only a bit of her was speaking for the whole, as though the rest of her was just watching from behind the screen of some false body. She didn't want to leave, but she did—she wondered if this was Reason talking, and whether she should listen.
"Sakura, I—"
"I thought I could do this with you, but I don't think I—"
The hand that pulled her back was unexpected, but she could have stopped it. Sakura supposed that the part of her that wanted to had finally receded.
"So don't think," he said, before he covered her mouth with his.
I don't think, I just write. Expect an update for cherry apple wine soon. I'm in the process of editing.
