sofa 03
vi.
Late the same night, Sakura and Naruto are sitting on her sofa, the beige one Naruto has partly destroyed before (covered with a yellow blanket as of now). Naruto is surfing through the TV channels and Sakura is reading, eyes absently flickering to the screen every now and then. Naruto finally decides then that there's nothing interesting enough for him to follow and turns off the TV, settling for just sitting instead.
Just sitting, yeah right.
His foot hits the parquet, his fingers drum a bizarre melody on his lap, he shifts, swings, tosses and turns until Sakura's ready to snap a few not-so-well thought thoughts to him. But when it stops just as suddenly as it has begun, she thanks herself for being patient.
Knowing Naruto, she knows that he is going to say something because there's no way he'd succumb to sitting quietly in one place unless he indeed is about to say something. Her eyes stare at the book, skipping lines and words, and she doesn't dare to take the initiative in fear of scaring him. Scaring him, yeah right, Sakura… The future Hokage, how could you scare him --
But as the first words he's spoken from his heart in a long time drop from his lips, Sakura knows she's the one who could crush his entire world.
vii.
"Naruto, why didn't you tell earlier?"
Sakura's thumb brushes his cheek, his jawline, his hair, and she can feel the anxiety and fear in him.
"You didn't ask." Alright, that's the one she can blame on herself.
"Why doesn't anybody else know?"
"I didn't tell them. And I'm the only one who knows." And that's the one she could blame on him if she had the heart to.
She pulls him into her arms, his stiff back a horrible mark of his emotional scars (and lack thereof). Silent tears run down her cheeks on his back as she feels him melting into her embrace, clutching at her back, mouth opened in a silent scream he has been holding in ever since Hinata's and Kiba's death.