Insomnia
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There are a lot of surprisingly interesting things to do in Konoha.
His little cousin lives in the most artsy part of town, the whole neighborhood is filled with art galleries, studios, fashion coffee places, street performers, cool bars and exotic restaurants.
He doesn´t try to write to-do lists anymore, not only because a crazy woman broke his work tablet, but mostly because the same crazy woman writes to-do lists herself.
He goes out to explore the city during the day, aimless looking for anything to do, and comes back to find out that Sasuke´s apartment is like her second home, and there are colorful post-it to-do lists all over if he looks closely.
On this very day, in the bathroom, he found one -hot pink, written with girly purple pen-, sticked to the mirror.
"Buy Sasuke-kun toilet paper (double sided)
Call Tsunade
Dinner with Ino and Hina
Ask for Karin´s notes"
He is angry and jealous because in one note, she can name more people than he has talked to in one week. He can only imagine her as a social butterfly, a small one that attacks random people and has an army of friends to help her finish the job if she´s not successful. He wonders if that's what will happen to him if they meet again.
"Is she your girlfriend?" He asks Sasuke, when the both are laying lazily on the couch surfing Netflix as a plan for Friday night.
"Sakura? No." He merely answers, and then clicks his tongue "Is such a shame Westworld is not on Netflix"
Shisui nods, pretending to know what Westworld is, just like he pretended he had a Netflix account earlier.
"Why not?" He catches himself asking "You seem close, apparently, she is always here"
Sasuke exhales and put the TV controller down, as if he is saying: okay, let´s talk about this.
There is a small pause, while Sasuke chooses his words.
"I wish I was enough for Sakura" He says seriously. "But I´m not. She is the kind of person that always wants more…" He suddenly stops "You two are actually very similar"
Shisui thinks it´s preposterous, having anything in common with such a careless pink haired kitten like Sakura Haruno. She is rosy, small and soft around the edges and acts like she has the biggest balls in the room. All they have in common is the habit of writing down tasks for the day, and he doesn´t even wants to do it anymore because of her.
"How so?" He presses on.
"For starters, you both just had a Burn out" Sasuke says, putting a name on Shisui´s sudden vacation like it is nothing. Shisui opens his mouth to deny it, but Sasuke is faster "Didn´t you?"
Well, it is what people said, when work became his life and at some point along the way he felt like he had nothing else, to the point of completely freezing, having to get away from it. Having people having to get him away from it. And then realizing work was amounting nothing to begin with.
Overworked was what Fugaku, his direct boss - and cousin´s father, said. Burn out syndrome was how his doctor named it, it was him who ordered Shisui to take a vacation, a long one.
"I… think so" Shisui finally says. He never even admitted it to Itachi, because Itachi is his best friend, and the official CEO of Uchiha Corp now, and it is feels like disappointing his boss, family, and best friend at the same time.
Sasuke, on the other hand, is not a lonely CEO, he is not someone Shisui needs to be strong for, Sasuke has built himself a beautiful crazy life in this crazy big city and looks at him like having a total meltdown and leaving work out of nowhere is normal.
"If you need someone to talk about it, maybe talk to her" Sasuke offers him a smile, no pity, no disappointment, just a small smile, the same one he wears while talking about his knives. "She is also taking a break, but from med school."
Suddenly, things he sees on Sasuke´s apartment start to connect, all the things that belong to Sakura. All the dozens of pristine plants he never waters, the medical congress entries the hanged on the wall, the neat first-aid kit, and then the picture above their heads, the one with the mixed colors.
He realizes the shade of pink on the painting is the same as her hair, and the dark blue is the same one painted on the Uchiha family insignia.
They don´t talk about it anymore. Shisui wants to, he wants to ask more about Sakura, but it is already enough that he is taking advice and finding solace in his seven years younger cousin during a crisis, it would be too much, to waste the night away making questions about a girl with pink hair who´s just as young as baby Sasuke.
They end up watching Rick and Morty that night, and he is delighted to know he is a thirty years old man laughing like a child while watching a colorful cartoon.
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The next day is a beautiful sunny Saturday morning and Shisui fights the urge to write down his tasks for the day again. He wakes up at six as usual, but it is Saturday, and he is on vacation, so he forces himself to stay in bed longer.
It´s hard to sleep these days. Scratch that, it hard to sleep for ages now. He is almost sure there were days he didn't sleep, days he just kept using his time to its maximum capacity to be productive, useful. When he was working, he would often get by sleeping three hours per day when he forced himself asleep.
It´s especially hard when he can´t sleep and has no work to do. He is confused on what to do, sleeping brings no pleasure and just feels like wasting time. But it is not like he is wasting time when he has no responsibilities to begin with.
It is also weird to sleep in Sasuke´s guest bedroom, the city itself never sleeps and there is always noise coming from the window, but it's the coconut smell that bothers him the most. The pillows smell sweet and there are some perfumed candles on top of the dresser he can smell even from far away. It feels like falling asleep in a candy shop, and he hates it.
He manages to stay in bed until nine in the morning, but it feels like torture. He takes his phone with him when he´s on his feet and ignores the terrible feeling on his chest from seeing his mailbox bursting with numbers, all unread work emails he can´t (-shouldn't) answer. His personal chat app is allowed though, so he opens it and finds a message from Sasuke, explaining he is at the shop on Saturdays until four, for training reasons, he says. Also:
"Sakura is over, in my bedroom, letting you know so you don´t get yourself attacked (again)."
He is surprised because they went to bed late the night before, binge watching shows he feels like he should have watched years ago, so she must have arrived very late.
In a sudden need to start things over with this girl, even though she is the one who attacked him and broke his tablet, he decides to cook breakfast for both of them.
Shisui find a simple knife in a drawer, purposely ignoring the beautiful ones on Sasuke´s tile walls, and cuts mushrooms and herbs, break and mix eggs, takes oranges from the fruit basket and toasts slices of sourdough he bought at this family owned bakery down the street.
When he finishes a big omelet breakfast with fresh orange juice and toasted bread with olive oil, he kinds of expects the girl to wake up by herself with the strong food smell lurking inside the apartment.
She doesn't.
He feels like it is unpolite to wake her up, so he opens the news app on his phone and starts reading.
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By noon, the food is cold for hours, he is hungry, and she is nowhere to be seen.
Shisui wonders if she is sleeping so much because she went out drinking the night before, but if she did, wouldn't he have heard she coming in in the middle of the night? He climbs the stairs to Sasuke´s bedroom, the one on the mezzanine of his loft, and sees a yellow sticky note on the slightly open door, it´s Sasuke´s handwriting.
"wake her up" it says.
Shisui get the message but feels like shit when he sees the girl sleeping so deeply. She wrapped herself in Sasuke´s covers and is snoring a little bit. She looks like she needs the sleep, so he ignores the message, she can´t really sleep for that long, can she?
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At three in the afternoon he wonders if she is even alive, and after a small check he sees that she is, because he can hear her soft snoring from where he is outside the door. Her phone rings a couple of times, but she never answers.
"Hey, Sakura" he finally knocks on the door "It´s very late, are you okay?"
She doesn't answer, doesn't even move from her cocoon. He enters the bedroom a bit hesitantly, should he wait the extra hour until Sasuke is home? It is a bit negligent; he did leave a note asking him to wake her up.
For the first time ever since his vacation started, he has a task, and he really wants to do something.
There is something he notices as soon as he steps into the bedroom: the coconut smell; the same one that haunts him in the guest bedroom. He finally realizes that this girl visits Sasuke often, and the guest bedroom must be where she usually stays. The same pillows he uses today, are the ones she´s been using for a long time.
The coconut smell is Sakura. No cherry blossom, no flowers at all, but coconut.
He can´t help but compare her to the other women he knows. She is not tall and serious, with social skirks and dark blazers. No, she is small and pink and wear animal socks. She is younger, and that could be an excuse, but any new worker her age in his company would rather die than dying their hair pink.
He tries to see her as Sasuke-chan littler friend. But then the image of the woman screaming and bouncing at him comes to mind.
The women at his office are tall, serious, properly spoken and dressed, but this one in front of him outshines them all with pure confidence and personality. He forces it down, but he finds that fact that this cute bundle of pink on the bed knocked him out not once, but twice, extremely attractive.
He shakes her shoulder lightly, but it takes more to wake her up, ten minutes in and he is already out of patience and shaking her violently and screaming her name.
When she finally comes to herself, she is very surprised to see him on Sasuke´s bed, shaking her awake in the middle of the day. He expects her to be embarrassed, messy hair, bad breath and pillow lines printed all over her face, caught sleeping more than a normal human should.
She merely mumbles profanities at him for walking her up and urges him to get out by slapping a pillow on his right cheek. When she comes to the kitchen a couple of minutes later, she looks exactly the same, he opens his mouth to tease her about being improper, but words die on his mouth when his eyes follow the curve of her ass peeking out of the over sized shirt she has on.
He tells himself she must be wearing something short under it, but the manly side of him kind of expects it to be cute tiny underwear.
They don´t talk until she has a steaming mug of coffee on her hands.
"It´s just like, it doesn´t matter how much I sleep I am still tired. Do you ever just want to do nothing? Nothing at all?" She tells him later when they heat up omelets in the microwave.
No.
He wants to say.
No, I don´t.
The words get stuck on his throat when he looks at her, she looks defeated when she explains herself for oversleeping. He feels defeated he can´t sleep. How can people answer so differently to the same problem and be both wrong?
Sasuke says they are similar because they went through the same thing, and yet he feels like they are both failing and doing the opposite of each other at the same time.
"I´m sorry I hit you." She says.
"Twice."
"What?"
"You hit me twice."
Sakura smiles a bratty smile, all bright pearls lined up perfectly.
"Sorry I hit you… twice"
He is sad they are struggling, but for some reason, he can´t stop smiling back.
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Shortly after, Sasuke is home. When he enters and see the two eating together he offers them a small Hello, kisses Sakura on the top of her head, nods to Shisui, sits with them and starts scrolling on his phone, occasionally breaking the silence to show them some pictures of what he did in the shop during the day.
They talk about nothing, and Sasuke convinces them to play Risk, the boardgame, and they do that for hours. Sakura wins and Shisui and Sasuke pretend not to be bothered
After the game, the three end up sprawled on the couch watching Rick and Morty until late night again, only this time with the girl in the middle, cuddling Sasuke´s torso. At around two Sakura is fast asleep and Sasuke says goodnight while carrying her to his room.
Shisui can´t help but shower, brush his teeth, pee, wash his hands and finally going to bed.
His phone screen shows 2:32am when he buries himself in the soft bed in Sasuke´s guest room, inhales, and falls asleep.
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The next day, he wakes up at ten.