Chapter II: "Di-di-did you trip down 12 steps into Malibu?" (II)
;The pessimist is stranded on the island of perpetual indecision.
— William Arthur Ward
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.
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Sasuke comes to blinding flashes of a warming sun blanketing him, limbs laden with deliquescing lead, and the tangy splash of copper prickling all over his mouth.
The gauzy skin of his eyelids ripples through the exertion of a grasped consciousness, irises peeking from quivering thin slits.
Not a smooth move.
He instantly jerks to the side, sheltering his oversensitive, smarting eyes.
A cottony ground cushions his spontaneous reaction, his hand flies, fingers falling splayed, to brace himself against it. After the lengthy adjustment period it takes for his eyesight to calibrate into a semi-decent focus, Sasuke finds himself...in the midst of seemingly nowhere.
Shimmering gold sand, fine as flour, sifts through the wan spaces between his knuckles.
Where in the world is he?
Bleeding back into his shrewdness by degrees, it's painfully clear none of this was out of his own volition. A scrupulous inspection grants him fragmented answers to the lengthening list of his queries.
He's in a different attire—of fucking course he's been disarmed.
Despite bathing in the sunlit radiance of a midday sun he isn't suffering from a sunburn, so his sojourn out here has been something of a transient matter.
Apart from the haze of discomfort, there's no hint of detectable pain or apparent physical damage; except for the circles of his wrists, besmirched with bruising blueness dissipation, and his ankles displaying an identical discoloration.
Also...
His fingertips twitch into the waves of gold warmed sand.
Something's off.
Sasuke almost snorts at his own thinking.
Something most definitely is off. Everything, for starters.
But he can't gloss over an intrusive awareness, sharp like the sting of a needle piercing through the skin of his nape.
The tug of a contemptuous frown crinkles his smooth features like dainty paper between fingers, his analytical mind anaesthetized but still whirring around the particulars and information deficit.
The last thing he remembers is—
Sasuke lurches back into the pockets of silken sand pressured compact beneath the impact of his open palms.
Throat parched arid, his voice drags out low, roughened with lack of use. "...What the hell?"
A glimmering sunlight hugs the bend of shoreline he's fixated upon, igniting a luminescent play and myriad of wary qualms.
He's paralyzed with venomous spleen, standing rooted in place as he attempts to unriddle the bemusing riddle. Not to mention the linger of the sensory fog, so dense he can barely see within five inches of his nose.
Which is why he consequently fails to grasp at the distinct, overfamiliar presence walking his very pathway.
Which would normally earn him the weight of his own wrath. But the wallow of shock paints him slower, fizzles out his instinctive knee-jerk reaction, sedates his obsession toward self-flagellation.
The stunned "...what the fuck are you doing here?" suddenly spit out his way has his chest caving around a breathless exhale.
Would you look at that...
Sasuke chews out the truncated thought with the cut of an ill-humored smirk. "...didn't this just take an interesting turn."
. . .
a/n:
ugh i'm so freaking in love with characters mirroring/acting in antithesis to each other's behavior! you'll get this a lot from me with Naruto and Sasuke especially
i'm sorry?