"Sasuke..."
He flinches as the words reach his ears, tickle his neck. He can feel his scalp prickling, and he shivers. It's cold. It's been years since he closed up, and now he thinks he might want to break that shell. He's tried, he really has, but habits are hard to break.
She whispers his name again, and suddenly he is seized with an unreasonable urge of irritation. This stupid woman. Why can't she just take her tantalizing voice and go away? She doesn't know anything in the world, only hides behind a shell of knowledge, hides behind him. He whirls around to say the words clinging heavily to his mind, but as he catches sight of her eyes, his spirit suddenly dies, and he gets the eerie prickly feeling again.
His mouth turns dry as he reaches over to touch his face, and he's surprised how calloused it is. It has a moist feeling, as if her sweat has caught between the ridges of her handprints, and it's curiously hot. It clashes with his fragile image of her, the sweet unharmonious feeling that breaks the image into a hundred and a dozen pieces, and they all seem to stab at his heart. His heart is bleeding.
"Sasuke..."
She's like a broken record, repeating the same thing over and over, and he is like newborn, an infant who drinks in her voice with uneasy relish. It's like he's never even heard his name before, and he's struck that he's never heard it said this way.
She doesn't seem like the silly girl she had been before, and he sees that her eyes are older, and it's funny how cold they make him feel. Not the cold mask he himself huddles behind, it's the nervous cold that flutters and beats at his innards. But looking at them, they're hot. Her eyes are pristine green, and yet they flicker in nearly the same manner as a fire.
It's the cold before the searing heat.
It's still cold, and he realizes he's sweating. His arms have the unpleasant feeling that one gets when the sweat lies damp in the cold, and settles. Looking at her, it's a burst of furious searing emotions. He can't imagine how they're going to settle in his stomach after the climax.
But the climax never comes. Being with her is the climax, and it is only when she finally tears her eyes away and walks slowly away that he can breathe again. He is struck again how she doesn't seem to walk anymore, only float.
And he turns back and walks home (home? never home). His fingers fumble at the key, and as he walks in, he feels the dank coolness hit him in a way she never did.
The emotions are settling into his stomach. He decides he had better not eat anything for the night.